Exercise 12: Positioning the Horizon

I guess this become a habit for me to skip ahead of exercises and do those that are easier first. In this exercise, I have to look at where the horizon should appear on the photograph. There are high rises everywhere in city of London and it is very difficult to find a pure horizon. So instead, I find something that occupied the horizon. For example, the iconic Tower Bridge.


Image 1 positions the "horizon" on the upper part of the frame, image 2 on the middle, and image 3 on the bottom part.

Image 1: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

 Image 2: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

 Image 3: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

Image 1 has more Thames river. Unfortunately the colour of the river is not that pleasant compare to the sky. Image 3 is better, but it has too much sky on a day that the cloud is not particularly strong (too thin, colour too light). Therefore the image is very heavy on the bottom half. Image 2 is the most  balanced one out of the three: it has some details on the busy river, and some sky. However, image 2 suffers from looking too typical touristy snap shot.


Let's try the same thing with taking a vertical frame instead.

Image 4: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

Image 5: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

Image 4 has too much river, but the effect is balance off by the orange floatation. It is looking better than image 1 to 3. Image 5 unfortunately suffers too much sky and bottom heavy again.


Let's try positioning the bridge on horizontal frame. The bridge sits on the middle of the frame in image 6, while it is on the left side of the frame on image 7.

Image 6: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

Image 7: 50mm, f/16, ISO 100, 1/160s

Overall I think image 4 is the best. There are too many distraction on the side and really not suitable for horizontal frame. The river is dirty and the sky is not too exciting, and the only way to balance it out is the jam in something with different colour on the screen. It seems those orange floatation did the trick.