Excercise 8: A sequence of composition

I told my tutor when I sent him my student profile, that one of things I aspire to, but am absolutely petrified of doing is street photography.  Guess what Excercise 8 is all about!  Well,  I can choose to photograph a landscape, but the initial suggestion is a public event with people.  I was hoping to have a bit longer to psyche myself up to shooting in public, but here it is already. 

So my plan is to actually shoot people in public (might as well push myself), but I will wait until the Chinese new year on 14/2/10 where there will be a parade and hopefully I won't get challenged for taking photos of strangers.  So I will come back to this excercise, and for now continue with the rest of the excercises.

Website showing colour combinations

Came across this site - kuler.adobe.com
thought it might be useful for the colour section of the course.

Some photos using panning

I'm pleased to say that being on this course has already affected the way I take my everyday family shots.  These are two where I tried panning instead of my usual 'must choose a really fast shutter speed to freeze the motion' technique.

Excercise 7: Object in Different Positions in the Frame

The subject needs to be smaller for this excercise but I attempted it with these:

1 First shot, not attempting to compose.

2 Centre of frame

 

3 This should have been the 'little way off centre' but because the subject is so large, it actually goes to the edge of the frame!

 

4 Edge of frame

I prefer the two at the edge of the frame but I need to redo this exercise with a smaller subject and a larger more even background.  I think I actually prefer photo number 3  as I think the lines of the road are contributing to my liking of the picture.

Excercise 6: Fitting the frame to the subject

Whoo hoo!  I've reached Part 1 of the the course.  Part 1 is about "The Frame". 

This is the first photo taken from a distance.

 

The next is placing the subject within a landscape

The next is deatiled shot

 

the next is fitting the subject to the frame although this isn't quite right as it acutally shows the drive and they sky above it (need to redo with a different subject!) 

So what's the purpose of this excercise? The course materials say that it is to experiment with how much space the subject takes up in the viewfinder. My photos can then be compared to those in the folder and they should all be of the same/similar proportions. That brings me back to my original question - so what has this taught me? I guess for me, it displays how the focus/main interest of the photograph changes with the amount the subject is in the frame. For example, with the subject set in a landscape, it puts the subject in context and and show the relationship between it and the landscape it is set in. It is probably the most comfortable scene to view as there is more information available to the viewer. The one with the detailed shot, funnily enough, changes the focus to the details/smaller objects/textures within the frame. I find the subject shot exactly to fit the frame to be less appealing as there is no context or detail to directly focus on. But this tight framing could be used well for photos where the photographer wants to convey the sense of large proprotions. It could be used well for objects that look like they are looming towards the viewer.

Excercise 5: Panning with different shutter speeds

Staying with the same subject from Excercise 4, I tried panning.  I found this a bit difficult as I was in a failry narrow space so the opportunity to pan was limited.  However, I did like some of the shots that came out.


These were all taken at 1/40

1

2

3

The following at 1/60

4

5

 

I really like 2 and 4.  2 because it's quite funny to just get her foot, and 4 because part of it is in focus and part not so it still retains the feeling of movement.

My overall favourite from the sequence in Excercise 4 and 5, on reflection is from Excercise 4 - photo number 4 as it has a lovely smooth motion blur in the skirt and hair but also gives the impression of having parts in focus.  I prefer it cropped like this...

Excercise 4: Shutter Speeds

This is an exercise focusing on shutter speeds which should be good for me as I rarely think of using shutter speed in an artistic way.  I usually only ever worry about it to avoid camera shake or motion blur, which as the exercise has shown me, can actually be used to great effect.

So I choose the shutter speed from very slow, to fast.  I set the camera to TV priority which means I get to choose the speed and the camera chooses the aperture.  My camera doesn't change the iso automatically in changing lights and I forgot to adjust this as the light changed so there are a few blown white spots on the photos when the sunlight was particularly bright.

1. shutter speed 1/4

 

2. shutter speed 1/15

3. shutter speed 1/30

4. shutter speed 1/40

5. shutter speed 1/60

  

6. shutter speed 1/100

  

7. shutter speed 1/125

8. shutter speed 1/250
 

9. shutter speed  1/640

I think that photo 7 at speed 1/125 sec photo is the slowest shutter speed from this collection that froze the motion.