Exercise 19: Diagonals

I can't explain why, but I find it is much easier to recognize diagonals then horizontal lines. It might be the later is too boring. However, when I walk on the street, many things look diagonals to me anyway.


Say how one end of the street lead to the other end, or how the stair going from low to high.

 Image 1: 50mm ISO 1600 f/4 at 1/20s

Image 2: 50mm f/4 ISO 1600 at 1/40s

Sometime even the plant line up in a diagonal manner.

Image 3: 70mm f/5 ISO 400 at 1/200s

Sometime the pattern on the street.

Image 4: 50mm f/1.8 ISO 100 at 1/320s

Exercise 17: Multiple Points

In this exercise, I am supposed to construct a screen starting with one point and gradually add more object in. I set up the remote flash on the side and fired at about 45 degrees angle to the subject. I try to put a piece of white cloth in front of the flash to soften the light, but it just doesn't seem to be any softer. Maybe next time I should try bounce it off from opposite direction. 

So we start with one big bowl of tomato. I want this to be my central subject, so I want it to be bigger to begin with.

The screen is quite empty, so let's put some small ones in the empty space. I put them in lower left corner to be some balance on the image.

Keep putting more on the empty space on the screen. Now I got something like a triangle dynamic. The big bowl still dominate the screen.

Instead of triangle, I want to move it a little bit to form a square. As it turns out, perfect square is not too interesting visually. 

So maybe a tighter circle around the bowl looks better?

With this construction, I move thing around just to see if other configuration looks any better. So let's say I want a diagonal line.

So wired with round tomato. The un-natural line extension is taking the focus away from the bowl.

Let's try the triangle again with different amount of tomato. 

It still looks fine as long as the sides are not too heavy to take away the weight on the bowl. 

I just have a feeling that even though I use remote flash instead of on-camera flash. The light source is just too small and it is why I see a white spot on the tomatos. A single piece of clothes is not enough to diffuse the light, so I think bounce flash might work better. I should also plan for a reflector next time so that the tomato is not so dark on one side. 

Maybe I should get a book on still life photography...

Exercise 16 The Relationship Between Points

In this exercise, I need to photograph two separate points. Then look at the relationship between the two. In theory there should be one that dominate the image.

Image 1: 50mm ISO 800 f/4 at 1/250

First of all, the two points stand out against a rather noisy background because they have distinct colour. The shape on the right hand side is dominating the image because it is larger.


What if I photograph something with equally dull colour or about the same size and same shape? Back to my home made studio with harsh lighting.

Image 2: 50mm ISO 400 f/11 at 1/100

Now it is less obvious on which one is dominating. I would say the Very Lazy Garlic on the upper left slightly dominates with longer shadow and clearer word. But if it is the case, this image looks rather floaty because the Garlic is too far up. I guess it is a bad idea to put the dominate subject too far up, and probably a bad idea since it is small and behind.

If I want to play it safe, the standard two points image will involve a much bigger subject compare to a smaller one on the other side of the frame to balance the image out. I think it should be a good consideration if I want to arrange vegetables for still life next time.

Image 3: 200mm ISO 100 f/11 at 1/640

Exercise 15 Positioning a Single Point

This is the first exercise in the second section of the course. Elements of design contains the study of point, lines, curves, pattern and shapes. In this exercise, I need to first jot down as many types of situation that would make a clear photograph of a point.

So this is what I think: 

First of all the background has to be plain, or blur (such as boken using large aperture) to avoid distraction. Then my subject has to be a singular (since we are talking about ONE point). In order to achieve that, I want either only one item on the frame, or one item with very bright colour, the rest with dull colour or simply blurry. It is also possible to use spot light to isolate the one subject out of many similar item in the background, but I am no good with lighting so it won't be easy for me to create that.

  

The second part of the exercise involves positioning a point on the image. The first shot involve setting some sort of studio at home. The background is some postal wrapping paper on sale in Reyman at GBP 1.69 a roll. The main light is a remote control SB-600. It is kind of harsh lighting that I should use some sort of reflector to bounce it next time. It looks okay here because there is a lot of space and hard shadow fills some of those emptiness.

It should be no brainer that this is indeed a point (only one small jam in front of plain background).

Image 1: 50mm f/11 ISO 400 at 1/100s

The next image I want to get some brighter colour object that stands out in front of some boring background. I see this post at Charing Cross. Bright yellow stands out of dark green. I use large aperture to make the background more blurry.

Image 2: 50mm f/1.8 ISO 400 at 1/500s

So far I have the tendency to put the point on lower right portion of the frame. Not sure why, but the left side looks less natural to me. Positioning on upper part of the frame makes to top too heavy and the image looks like it is going to flip. The next shot I want to have a bigger point that occupying more of the frame. I want to subject to have some texture rather than a boring yellow ball, but I don't want it too be too interesting and the minor detail takes over. So this is roughly okay:

Image 3: 50mm f/5.6 ISO 400 at 1/500s

It is not hard to picture a point, but I find it hard to balance to image if there is only one thing in the picture. Some of the shots look somewhat artificial to me. Oh well. 

Three months after enrolled in OCA programe, have I improved at all?

Who knows???



I really like this cartooner named Aaron Johnson. More of his work can be found here. http://www.whattheduck.net/

I happened to be in the KIKK vs Tottenham match two weeks ago, and ran into Elise, the football player in training from KIKK. I passed her my card. She noted that my title is "A Camera User", but not a "Photographer". I laughed.

In these day, anyone can call themselves a photographer. You can have no education, no job, but you can still call yourself a photographer. There is not even an exam to pass, a license to get. I simply don't see the worth behind this little title.

By the way, I am a camera user. As it implies, I use camera.

Assignment 1: Contrast

The first assignment requires me to produce 8 pairs of shots that show contrast in separate images. 


1. Big/Small

2. Diagonal/Round

3. Dark/Light

4. Many/Few

5. High/Low

6. Black/White

7. Board/ Narrow

8. Still/Moving

  9. Thin/Thick

10. Opaque/Transparent

Two concepts in one picture: still/moving

Exercise 14: Cropping

This exercise requires me to take one picture and looks for different way to crop the image. So I start with this shot I took in Regents park.

Image 1: 70mm, f/8, ISO 400, at 1/50s

I first try cropping out the top and the bottom so that the tree line is stronger. Here is the second image.

The third image is not aim at the tree line, but the path going to the end. Therefore I will cut off the tree line by using a vertical crop.

Exercise 10: Focal Lengths and Different Viewpoints

This exercise requires me to shoot few images using different focal length. I choose one screen on a cemetery with a bench and a tree root.

Image 1: 70mm, f/9, ISO 200, at 1/100s

Image 2: 52mm, f/9, ISO 200, at 1/100s

Image 3: 28mm, f/9, ISO 200, at 1/100s

As the focal length shorten, the root appears to be bigger and the distance from the bench looks longer. The two images with focal lengths above 50mm looks similar.

Exercise 11: Balance

The exercise is trying to find how the balance works in the images. Here are the images I selected.

Image 1: 200mm, f6.3, ISO 100, 1/500s

The ball in mid air and the player are in balance.

Image 2: 28mm, ISO 800, f/2.8 at 1/80s

The sculpture and the small objects on the floor are in balance.

Image 3: 28mm, ISO 200, f/4, at 1/40s

The lamp post in front and the background bridge are in balance.

Image 4: 500mm, ISO 1000, f/7.1 at 1/500s

The ball and the player are in balance.