Geometry and the elements of design

It's been a while since I put finger to keyboard and this entry will attempt to put down some of the groundwork for some of the exercises in EoD.

I knew I would need some resource when I went to Dubrovnik and Montenegro and some of the photographs are from that time - about 4 or 5 weeks ago and others have been taken to try and give a broader response to the requirements of the exercise.

I feel confident that I understand the constructional requirements in these exercise but I am acutely aware that I need to do two things:

Firstly to provide more evidence from imagery that has been taken to fulfil these exercises and secondly to try and interweave some narrative into them.





Lines: Horizontal, vertical and mixed.

This is an image I took many years ago and vlearly it is about the twin trees that are alomost at the horizon. The newly worked field has a clear direction of travel to those trees and whilst this is a full frame from a 6X6 negative a better viewpoint (for this exercise) would have been to reduce the sky content and effectively raise the horizon.
The next image was taken a week or so ago and I had the above image in my mind at the time. I raised the horizon and used the vertical lines lines to draw the view to the horizontal. The twin tress are over the horizon but balance the image.

The images here uses both horizontal and vertical lines to draw the view to the horizon in the upper shot there are telegraph lines echoing the horizon, whereas the lower image has bolder verticals and horizontals due to the stronger light on the day this was taken

An alternative image with a combination of horizontals and verticals are these holiday chalets - complimented with orbs of greenery. A very regular structure

Diagonals

The picture above - taken from a dungeon in India has a very strong diagonal, in fact it could be said that there is nothing else in the image, whereas the the image opposite it is more complex with a number of diagonals all competing - I had decided that this was a monochrome image, albeit toned, to help with the visual decoding.

The image of the piece of deadwood was constructed along the vertical, but it could be argued that a more complex construction is available via the "turn" in the wood towards the top right corner. The image opposite has a very strong diagonal light ray from top right to bottom left

This pair of peacocks are perched on the diagonal, both interestingly looking out of the frame.

Newer shots

The portrait is composed on the diagonal which can be an effective technique for portraits. The landscape opposite has a rolling diagonal which might be emphasised more dramatically with a narrower crop to remove some of the redundancy in the lower third.

A much weaker diagonal using the fence

This hog-weed head has a variety of diagonals running through it - bottom right to the left third and from that point to various points on the frame edge.

These early morning churchyard shots rely on light rays to provide the strong diagonals; soon after the mist would lifted and whilst it was a nice sunny day there would have been no real opportunity to describe the scene in any meaningful way for the exercise.









Triangles

The tomb has a very strong triangular structure, but whilst the compositional idea is very obvious the positioning of the tomb within the frame could have been better placed to bring the apex of the window both centrally in the frame and above the casket itself.

Up to date shots

The bell tower on the left has a clear triangular structure and the boat rope opposite has an implied triangle - or it could be said that the horizon resolves and brings two distinct triangles to the image.

The hogweed stem has some clear implied triangles even if the edges are slightly curved, whereas the metal framework has a multiple of triangular structures to               dwell upon, both implied and actual.

The grass stems opposite create a couple of implied triangles. The very short depth of field is used to bring forward the construct in what would otherwise have been a very confused image.
The ship's mast below has multiple triangles, implied and actual as well as implied rectangles that utilise the edge of the frame to deliver the

Circles:

 This is another piece of deadwood that I captured some years ago and whilst the image is a little flat it has a clear circular viewpoint.

The hogweed seed head is set in a semi-cicular form

Compositional lines

 This shot, again of the deadwood has a very distinct direction of travel for the viewer to the boat, even the cloud extends a radial point to the boat.

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.