So I finally published my first assignment. To help my tutor follow my progress, I decided to add each new assignment as a page in my blog. In this way the assignments are not lost among the other posts. You are welcome to check it out. The link is in the sidebar on the right or use this link Assingment 1: Contrasts
Contrasts, rounded
I’m currently preparing my first assignment. This assignment is about finding contrasts like long/short, still/moving, straight/curved. I have noticed that when I have a project like this my mind starts to work on a subconscious level. I start to see “curves” everywhere and “smooth” or “rough”.
Inside the "Color sphere"
I just found the eyewitness photographs on the Guardian site. There are some really amazing photographs and what I found interesting is the “Pro tip” beside every photograph explaining what makes the photograph good. There is good advice about lighting, lens choice etc. Some of the info is quite obvious but it’s good to read something of the photograph. Otherwise it’s too easy to browse the photographs quickly and not pay attention why the photograph feels good. I like to see good photographs taken by others and I always try to analyze the photograph with the knowledge I have and try to explain myself why I like it or don’t like. I also find it inspiring and I get more ideas for my own photography.
panoramic image made of 5 different images
This exercise was about cropping and recomposing an image. I chose three of my old photographs and as I examined them, I tried to find a better composition or balance. Sometimes it is a good (or even only) method to remove distracting details from an image. These images show no such example but for example in my pictures from Drag race (Nitro Nationals 2011) elsewhere in my blog, I had to crop some images to remove unwanted details from the foreground. (more…)
This exercise was to photograph the same location twice. First taking 20 photographs vertical and then analyze the images. Then return to the location and take next 20 photographs horizontal of every vertical composition I took in the first time. (more…)
Obscured Objects
I have just finished transferring my old posts (and old exercises) to this new site. So, if you ever wonder why so many of my exercises are dated on the same day, it’s because of this.
Now it’s time for some new posts and new exercises. I have done my next exercises about vertical and horizontal images and cropping. Or, to be precise, I have taken the images but have not yet written my explanation and comments. I’ll add those exercises to this blog soon so then I can start my first assessment.
Sunset in Helsinki
The idea of balance is fundamental in composition. In some pictures it is very obvious and in others it may be more difficult to spot. Simplistically the idea is that the elements in the picture should be positioned so that the picture frame is divided equally to all sides (or left and right). Let’s have first a few examples. (more…)
My second exercise today was also about focal lengths but this time the subject in the picture should remain same size. I first took a picture of a monument with my lens zoomed to 85mm. I then zoomed the lens to it’s widest setting which is 24mm. Then I walked straight towards the monument until the monument appeared same size as with 85mm.
Compared to the earlier exercise, this time the perspective changes dramatically. I placed the top right corner of the monument in the same position in the picture so you can really see the effect of using different focal length with different distance to the subject. Note that the distance is the key this time (see my earlier post). (more…)
This exercise is to appreciate the effect of different focal lengths as to know which is the amount of view of different lenses. The point is, I believe, to understand that focal length only set the angle of view. This mean that if you magnify a part of image taken with a wide angle lens (short focal length) and then compare it to same image taken with a telephoto lens (long focal length), all the relationship between different objects in the scene remain the same. I will prove this in the end of this post.
One should also note that I use Nikon D700 camera body which is so called Full Frame (FF-body). This means that the sensor in this camera body is the same size as 35mm film camera film frame (24 x 36mm). The focal length of lenses is expressed in mm. If a digital camera sensor is smaller than FF sensor it records smaller area of the view with same lens as FF camera body. This difference is called crop factor. For example Nikon APS-C (Nikon DX) camera bodies have a crop factor of 1.5. So, on a DX camera, a lens of 100mm focal length gives the same amount of view as a lens of 150mm of focal length on an FF camera. (more…)
