Assignment 1: Contrasts

I have had a very frustrating time with producing these photographs. The ideas and theory were not an issue, it was due to my hardware and computer software. Firstly my computer keeps freezing when I open Elements 8 which is my preference for photo editing, and then my printer decided to do its own thing. I had difficulty working out the settings to enable me to print my photographs to photo quality, without the printer wanting to edit the colour for me. Then the printer package insists on cropping to fit the page and the white border is not symmetrical. If this was not enough to drive me round the bend, the pages I printed not only had steaks and large blobs of ink randomly over the page but none of the colours seemed to match the result I anticipated. I am still unsure if this is due to my screens settings needing adjustment or the settings on the printer and/or paper.

Now I have a new screen, in fact I have a whole new all in one computer. So far this seems a lot faster and the screen colours are very good. Now all I need is to be able to find my files I’ve transferred across and I’m back in business.

After watching a short video on OCA about presentation of photographs, I hunted the shops for some matt photo paper, which was highly recommended. Finally I found one place that sold Cannon matt paper in only an A4 size. Now that I have this paper, I want to use the value pack I purchased some time ago as my preference. The photos are dull and lifeless. I will persevere with the matt and feel I need to ask advice from my tutor about presentation for my next assignment and for assessment. 

Many - ISO 100 f3.60 50mm

           

Few - ISO 200 f4.80 50mm

Few and many. My first pair of contrasts. It seemed like an easy option to take a photo of some gravel at a distance to enable a large quantity of stones to be in the frame and at a close proximity for a very few. My problems with these began with the light, shade and shadows. On the close up, few, I had difficulty in keeping the whole picture in focus whilst using the macro setting. 

Black - ISO 800 f3.60 50mm

White - ISO 100 f8 56mm

Black and White. Both of these coursed problems of their own. Black was so deep that I kept loosing the detail of the items. The black fire would have been lost should it not have been for the light within and the reflection in the glass proved a constant problem. White is out of focus on the petals but the centre of the flower shows such detail that I had to include it in my selection. I wanted the background out of focus whilst the whole flower was in but this was the best of my efforts. 

Straight - ISO 160 f3.60 50mm

Curved - ISO 100 f3.60 50mm

Straight and Curved. The straight bamboo shoots and the curved heather growing towards the light caught my eye for this pair. Most plants in the garden could have made a shoot for curved but I liked the colourings and different qualities with in this frame. Such as the dense, darkness of the leaves to the right of the picture, the mid tones of grey in the gravel and the lightness of the stone path the upper left hand side which seems to draw the eyes along the curve of the plant in a quite unbalanced frame. Bamboo has always fascinated me as nothing stops this plant make its way straight up towards the sky. 

High -  ISO 125 f3.60 50mm

Low - ISO f3.60 50mm

High and Low. I love the high tree although I’m sure there are many technical issues with this shot such as the burnt out sky. This for me makes the picture and gives a contrast to the out of focus leaves and upper branches. Should the sky be a deep blue I wonder if this would counter balance my efforts of this being a picture of being high, so high that your eyes can’t focus on the uppermost parts. Still with the tree, low was a fairy sitting at the bottom. Another contrast with in the picture I noted is the artificial stone of the statue with the natural bark of the tree, fungus behind the fairy and the grass and dead leaves scattered on the ground. 

Hard - ISO 800 f3.90 70mm

Soft - ISO 800 f4.70 130mm

Soft and Hard. I had to be a teddy as the first thing that came to mind when thinking of soft was a baby. I don’t have one of them so close second been my teddy which sits on my chest of drawers and the hard also a teddy. This one is wooden form my lounge. I also took the two together as my contrasts, ‘in one picture’ but discarded this for another which I feel worked well. 

Diagonal - ISO 400 f5.40 200mm

Round - ISO 125 f4.30 100mm

Diagonal and Rounded. Rounded was an easy option for me having taken a photograph of my garden clock on a previous occasion at an obscure angle with good results then I spotted the bird table for a diagonal. The settings on my camera seemed easy to control in daylight and both photos came out very well. I played with both with their angles taking a selection to choose only one of each for this assignment. 

Sour - ISO 200 f3.60 50mm

Sweet - ISO 800 f3.60 50mm

Sweet and Sour. I now take my camera everywhere with me and had a great opportunity of sour when eating an Indian meal. The shape on the side of the plate looked so pretty I had to take a shot. The light and reflections were troublesome and I had to refrain from standing on the chair should my local restaurant never let me back again. After the meal with the lemon garnish I ordered a desert purely to enable me to take a photo. The black was more trouble than the white with reflections and shadows, although I do like to composition and would like to perhaps use the computer software to edit this picture to give a deep rich black background. 

Opaque - ISO 800 f3.90 70mm

Transparent - ISO 320 f4.30 100mm

Transparent and Opaque. I am very pleased with the results of transparent. My glass ornament with an etched internal rose was the in my opinion the best thing I could have chosen. This photograph took me the longest to capture and the most attempts to get the results I wanted. The angles were not the easiest things to get right and most backgrounds seemed to clash and take something away from the overall look. This was until I utilised my coloured paper stash and surrounded the ornament with a nice blue light weight card. I stuck the card to the wall and table and used a lamp at a distance to shine through the glass at an angle from the lower part of the rose stem. Opaque has a good result given the prop. I used a velvet rose which has given a grainy effect. 

Opaque and Transparent - ISO 800 f43.80 62mm

‘In One Picture’ Transparent with Opaque. Two roses, one velvet, one etched in glass, so different, yet the same. The red velvet rose in the foreground is a little dark but still light enough to see the petal detail and the glass bright to show the etching with the lamp shining through it but not so bright that it burnt out. Even the lines where the wall meets the worktop work well in the background. I set myself a difficult task to take a balanced photograph with two huge contrasts.

I do have trouble remembering which aperture and f stop settings should be used to produce pleasing results and still rely on automatic settings. I first take an auto picture and study the levels the camera has selected, after which I use these and similar to replicate and hopefully improve the shot. My own opinion of my work is that I need a lot more practice. My ideas are mostly there. The look I’m after, on the whole, does not happen. 

Cropping

The red gate: My first of three photographs I selected for this cropping exercise is a picture I took during the winter in the snow. I thought it might draw the eyes along the wall next to the snow covered gardens. When cropping I found that a much tighter picture looked a lot better. The background was rather busy with too many bits of detail. This crop of the focal point of the picture, the gate and wall, make these stand out in the frame without all the background distraction. The yellow/green bush in the garden behind gives a subtle contrast whilst the reds in the gate and the wall now take centre stage in the shot.
 

 Outside Summerset House: I always like a landscape shot of buildings and this would always be my first reaction to take a picture in this manner. I cropped the photo to a portrait to accommodate the shape of the lamppost and kept the two domes within the frame so that they mirrored each other. The sky now appears brighter and with more contrast having been awarded a third of the frame. This is also reflected in the proportion of the buildings and the court yard which also both have approximately a third each. I like the bollard which I have left just off centre towards the foreground of the picture as this mark gives a reference to the death of frame.
 

London bike parking: I wanted to show the depth in the picture through the line of cycles with the background slightly out of focus. The strong shapes, circles and straight lines, were to become my focal point with mostly grey tones, a bit of blue and a very slight hint of red in two small spots in the background. I did not know how I was going to crop this picture at the start and concentrated on the items I didn’t want to keep. First thing to go was the people walking along the pavement then the bit of road to the left to make a square photo. This did not work as the black bollard now tight on the bottom left corner looked very odd and have to be removed. More cropping this time for a taller picture reflecting the shape of the bollard from the left of the photo now central and the frame a little wider than the width of the nearest front wheel.


This exercise has taught me that even a seemingly lost shot can become an interesting photograph with a bit of cropping in the right place. The bikes especially were nothing extraordinary which changed totally with a different crop. A little imagination can change an unbalanced photograph in to an interesting piece of art. 

Vertical and Horizontal Frames

I spent the day in London so took my camera with me to make good use of my time taking snaps for this exercise. None of my photos have been edited any way.

When photographing landscape it seems natural to me to take horizontal pictures and found that I was looking for tall objects for the vertical challenge. I did slip in the odd plant pot and a portrait for good measure. 

When studying the results, it became apparent that my horizontal choices would have an even weight across the middle of the picture, and/or a horizon line across the horizontal line which would section a third of the photo. I also selected to keep a larger amount of the foreground. 

A very different result was apparent with the vertical photograph choices. These were mostly centre waited with taller objects, i. e. a statue or a person, mostly weighted to the bottom of the frame and containing vertical lines. 

The differences were quite surprising with the vertical shots giving a hidden depth to the frame. 

If I were to repeat this exercise I would select a tighter image with a more cropped effect.