Positioning in the Frame

 These 6 photographs are all very difference even though they are of the same scene. Lifting the horizon can give the effect of depth drawing the eye towards the sky, foreground, and background or even make you want to look at the whole frame at first glance.

Of my 6, number 1 is my favourite. The dominant sky is very dramatic and ranges from a rich blue running down the photo getting paler towards the horizon line. The trees are a deep green and details of the houses easily seen through the tree tops.

The London buildings are so far in the distance that in all the pictures they are a little grey and faded which gives a feeling of depth to the frame.

Number 6 is a close contender with almost opposite qualities. The sky is pale with the trees and houses having the vibrancy in this picture. The building and close trees look as if you could reach out and touch them, whilst the horizon line looks slightly unreal as if they were pasted on.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Balance

For this exercise I took 6 photographs I had already taken to look at the balance. 


My selection of photos took some time as it seems that I tend to naturally take pictures with the one central figure, or a beach shoot showing land to one side with nothing to balance the scene. 

Focal Lengths and Different View Points

For this exercise I took two photos of my partner down on the rive. It was a sunny day and I did not realise the poor quality of my pictures until down loaded on to my computer and found that my settings must have been wrong on my camera. As this is a learning exercise I decided to use these anyway. The picture on the left looks over exposed and the one on the right is spoilt with camera shake.

Both frames were taken on Aperture priority on f22. The first frame was taken on my short 18 to 55mm lens at a setting of 18mm standing close enough to nearly fill the frame. The second on my longer 70 to 300mm lens on a 300mm length standing way at a distance until the person looked similar in size.

The differences in the two pictures was quite surprising to me at first until I thought about why the backgrounds looked so different. The shorter lens (18mm setting) gave a feeling of depth to the whole picture with the bridge in the distance and the river disappearing as far as can be seen. The second picture taken with the longer lens (300mm) brings the foreground and the background in to one with a magnifying effect to the background. This made it look as if he was almost under the bridge and cut out the river altogether.

Focal Lenghts

These nine images were taken at different focal lengths all with the same camera settings, f22 Aperture Priority, using two different lenses with ranges from 18mm to 300mm. When examining each picture, it was apparent that the telephoto lens produced a replica of the centre of the wide-angle photo (18mm). I became aware of the different light in each photo. The wide-angle photos are much darker the more magnified images which led me to examine why. This may have been in part that my camera was set for spot metering and would have benefited from being on a matrix setting. 

A Sequence of Composition

I choose to take a number of photographs for this exercise whist on holiday spending a day at Madeira. Being self conscious of people watching me with my camera in my hand, I felt more at ease being a tourist.

I wanted to capture people going about there everyday business. The shop keeper in her doorway, diners sitting having lunch, musicians entertaining in the square and a guy sitting enjoying a cool glass of beer.

I

 I was most happy with the one photo showing four men. They are standing next to a taxi and look like they could be cab drivers waiting for their next fare. The picture is framed with a tree to the left, a lamp towards the right and a sign post in the middle. The yellow on the post is balanced by the colour on the car, and the blue on the car with the trousers and shirt worn by two of the men. Three men are looking towards a man who has a smile on his face. Altogether I felt this is a well balanced shot of a picture that could tell a story. 

Object in Different Positions in the Frame

 I took the same look of the rice farmer set in a large plain back ground from the course work for my subject for this exercise. Placing a ceramic fairy in the slightly overgrown grass in my garden I took a selection of photographs of the fairy in different positions in the frame. My first was central and small then concentrating on the viewfinder I was drawn to the object being on the right hand side.  

My preference in reverse order is as follows:

5.         The subject is to the left. This didn’t sit well in the frame for me as the fairy’s body is facing the left making the picture feel unbalanced. 

4.         Fairy in the centre of the frame and seems a bit small for my liking, although it does seem to show how small the statue is and says it is a photograph of a fairy in the grass.

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3.         As number 4, the fairy is in the centre of the frame but this time a little larger taking away some of the element of scale. 

2.         This shot was better for me giving the sense of the fairy leaning over from the right into the never ending expanse of grass.

1.         The better shot in my opinion. The fairy is on the right but large enough to be a photography of the fairy not of the grass. I like the balance of the statue being contained with in a third of the photograph. I would have still liked to have taken another shot after looking at the results on screen or cropped this frame in Photoshop to have the fairy nearer the edge of the picture and large to fill the third of the frame whilst still being contained in the section. 

Fitting the Frame to the Subject

This section surprised me in a couple of ways. Firstly it was difficult to find an object of interest to focus on without any background interference. I took a sequence of photographs of an old wall, now with railings around and protected and a very large tree trunk in a clearing. Neither of these seemed suitable and the safe option of the car seemed more appealing. (Hope the owner don't mind.)

When cropping the picture I found many other options that I would have not considered before when looking through the viewfinder.