LO1: Photography Talk with Duncan Phillpot

Duncan Phillpot is a local sports photographer and these are the questions that I could ask him about his style of photography. 

Question I can ask:
1. What kind of meanings do you try to convey in your photos?
2. What kind of lighting do you focus on when doing sports photography?
3. What kind of focus would you follow, based on the theme of 'identity'?

Post-talk Write up:
The photos that Duncan had provided for several companies had a range of uses, from movie covers, Instagram photos, promotion etc. He even took photos just for a personal touch so that he could keep finding new ideas. "Be proactive in photography helps in any situation, even if it means just taking pictures for just personal preference." Shot selection is one the main processes he talked about when doing photography. It requires the photographer to select from a huge selection of photos he or she has taken. An example of how many pictures he had taken from one of his briefs was around 2000+ and he narrowed the selection down to around 200+. This is because he analysed his photos and chose the ones closest to the brief. He arranged them in terms of how closely it would represent the brief better using stars and colour coding and this allowed him to filter which one would work well with what part of the brief he needed it for.

Although he said that he is a sports photographer, he mentioned how it was somewhat misleading as he did other types of photography but he is known for being a sport action photographer. He does photojournalism, editorial, commercial, instagram photography and sometimes does it just for personal reasons to impress and to express freedom through photography.

Considering he took photos of sports and mostly action shots, he mostly focused on bright lighting. Although he took portraiture styled photographs for a movie cover. He uses the lighting to convey other forms of meanings. His sports photography style contains quite a lot of action shots in which the subject may be moving quickly and he chooses to use a fast shutter speed for these shots. Sports photography in general has a lot of movement and requires fast shutter speeds although Duncan did take a picture with a lower shutter speed to catch a fast moment, quite literally. The slow shutter speed in one his photos created a sort of blurring background on his image which displayed a sense of speed whilst the subject was still clear. This also means that the main focal point is more obvious and the eyes are more easily directed towards the subject.

An example of a technique he uses to take a few of his photos is having the camera lifted into the air angled downwards/upwards depending on the shot and looking out to create a wide shot with the effect of the photo feeling more farther or steeper. He replicated this effect for his Nike brief the photo which had that effect was chosen 2nd best out of his 6 photos (He was still chosen to have his photo up though.).