Moving on

Elements of design

What I thought initially would be an exercise that I would really enjoy has turned out to be difficult to start; not sure why that might be; we've had a mixed bag of news recently. Our youngest son has made grandparents of us and our eldest has announced his wedding plans, but one of our dearest and closest friends may be losing (lost) her fight and against cancer. I was really quite pleased with assignment 1, it seemed to go quite well and the tutors remarks were, on the whole, quite positive. I made one elementary mistake on one of the images - which I plan to correct and maybe one or two pictorial errors of judgement - those I may just leave.

Reading EoD, I am sure that I understand most of the principles (time will tell) and can recognise them when I have used some of them in my personal work to date - which is why I thought I wouldn't have any issues getting into the assignment. There isn't a lack of motivation and I've had lots of ideas but I just haven't got started, not really got up any head of steam, despite working on a couple of my own images from stock.

Single point. 

The couple of linked cottages to the right preface a 

sweep across the picture, with fencing and shadow 

providing echoing lines.

The blue line shows the "flow" of the shot from left to 

right(I still compose most of my shots this way), whilst 

the cottages are close to the golden section - if only I 

had cropped it better

Twin points.

The storm clouds were the initial inspiration for this shot. 

The foreground bathed in glorious sunshine whilst the

impending gloom grew on the horizon. To emphasize 

point (double) I cropped the foreground and cloned a 

couple of small boats from the shot.

My original thought on this shot show's the point of 

resolution not working, the boats lead the eye to the 

horizon but there's nothing for the eye to adhere to, 

an alternate view below may be more realistic. The 

triangle structure is still there, though not not shown

Single points (?)

Not sure about these two lamp images and whether 

they would count as single points. Clearly they 

dominate the image - there is nothing else - but the 

shadows are very strong. The shot on the right has 

been cropped to remove some irrelevance.

Whilst the crossing points are nearly on the thirds, the added 

ambiguity of the shadows adds interest but distracts the eye.

Single points, with implied triangle.

These two shots, of the same subject from different

perspectives, whilst in colour have a monochromatic 

feel. I prefer the top image, which to me has a

stronger dynamic about it despite the horizon sitting

almost dead centre. The top image could be stretched 

into having twin points with the tree wide right 

resolving the implied triangle - I did think about 

cropping the additional (central) post from the shot.

The green lines showing the implied direction for the triangle

The shot above has a single point with an implied 

triangle to the dark "blob" wide right. It is far 

more static than the previous image despite having 

the horizon slightly higher in the frame

This photograph is very easy to resolve the simplicity

 of the image - really only the post, the sand and the sky 

helps to minimise any distractions

Single and double point comparisons

These pressure cookers - used to process Tuna in the Maldives - work better as a single point. There is a difficulty with the twin cooker shot as the eye finds it difficult to resolve, whereas with the single view the lead-i light (from the window above) takes the eye directly to the cooker, where the central roundel sits on the thirds, as easy place to reside. Shot in black and white film, there was no possibility of colour distracting the viewer, however there wasn't a great deal of conflicting colour in the relatively dimly lit factory.

I feel the image left is far easier to resolve, to comprehend that the "twin" shot. Maybe if the twin shot was further back and not holding the centre of the cookers at the centre line of the image. Food for thought - pun intended.

Two more single points

The sunset shot above has a single point derived from the flash of light on the thirds that picks up a outcrop of rock in the sea. I looked at a portrait crop of the same scene but the cloud to the left of the sun starts to conflict with the sun's ray across the sea. The plant left has a fan like appearance and all the leaves resolve at the end of the stalk. Shot with black and white film this has been given a digital Lith' effect in CS5

The sunset shot is the easiest shot to resolve in this series and the fan shot, whilst a simple image maybe more complex - still working that one out.

Thoughts on single point images and how to generate them:

As on p55 TAOP course notes, the background to the "point" could be a plain canvass - grassy meadow in this case. Other blank canvasses could be the sea, the sky and other monotonic scapes such as desert etc. Compositional devices could be scale i.e. make the subject/object dominate by its size as compared to other objects in the frame. Depth of focus could be used to emphasise the subject, as well as colour - although we have been encouraged to think in monochrome for this exercise, clearly colour contrast would be a way to bring forward much in the same way as tonal contrast. Local contrast to bring forward (or push back) parts of an image. Directional lighting as in the sunset picture above........

I need to go and take some photographs now.



This straw bale appears to be part of a "flow" from left to right (I normally read photographs in this way, so probably composed it sub-conciously). It would have been better not to have had its core on the mid point from a longitudinal perspective and rather had it sitting either further up the frame or, I think better place, moved down the frame on a third coinciding with the right third placement.

The single end-on bale has its core at the mid point from a vertical standpoint but on the third and roughly in line with the horizon. I could maybe have darkened the foreground a little more to bring the eye into the focal zone.

This composition is the most pleasing to me. The bale is on the horizon which is placed on the upper third, it forms a triangle with the bale behind and there is another triangle formed by the implied line of the upper triangle and the edge of the grass in the foreground. It is more complex from a construction perspective but doesn't appear so.

Looking to find appropriate subjects for this exercise was more difficult that I thought it would be, but my excuse is that we have had very sad news in the last week, which has affected me more than I thought it would. Hopefully  will get back to normal and get the next exercise underway very shortly.