Assignment One - Contrasts

This exercise is to take pairs of photographs that illustrate contrasting items; large/small, straight/curved etc.

Presented with this challenge I struggled a little at first because it is so out of context of an overall general composition that I would normally start with in my mind.

I decided to select contrasts that have played a part in my year past and capture them in photographs. Once the pictures were taken, I realised that many of the pictures although selected for contrasts according to the pairs stated for the assignment, they represent contrasts in many other ways that I had not noticed before.

1. Black / White  - Coffee

Over Christmas dinner we were discussing coffee and my wife asked for black.  One of our daughters who is currently working for a human rights organisation was somewhat shocked she used the word black.   It sparked a debate as to whether or not this was acceptable.  I live in Dubai where there are human rights issues but the topic of over zealous political correctness never rears its head – it’s a diverse society where colours, religions and traditions all mix, so this topic was long forgotten in my mind.  I found it amazing that the act of ordering a coffee could lead to this and that a simple leap from one world to another can happen when the terms are the same.  

Black

White

Technically, I am happy with these photographs, they look exactly as I had intended.

2. Large / Small - Boats

These shots are taken right outside my window.  The photos show a nice full line of the large boats but a somewhat empty line of the smaller ones.  We looked at buying a boat when we moved to Dubai but with Dubai being what it is, there are lots of the large ones, but hardly any small ones.   Demoralised, we never bothered!  For me, this contrast represents not only the size of boats, but also the divide that exists in Dubai between the extremely wealthy and those that are not.

Large

Small

Technically, the pictures show what I had intended but they are both a bit unbalanced with the subject to one side and a wide expanse of water to the other.

3. Straight / Curved – Abstract Furniture 

Our apartment in Dubai has one huge living space.  We have some very angular furniture in one part of the room and some curved in another.  They are far enough apart that they don’t clash but when put together they don’t go; we spent so long choosing the curved stools that it was disappointing that they don’t go with the rest of the room.  I never really worked out why until this exercise when I was looking at the form of things and it dawned on me the contrast between the two.  Given the revelation, I decided to capture the difference in an abstract form.

Straight

Curved

4. Straight / Curved – A Walk in the Park

I live on the Palm in Dubai and my apartment is right at the top of the main trunk.  Down the middle of the trunk is a park and exercise track.  The trunk is around 2km long and 200m wide so this makes for a very long and straight park that is a nice place to walk.

The park has a track running along its edge.  It is dead straight for the whole 2km and so walking along it seems like a long way.    Next to it there is a curved path that winds its way through plants and water features.  As it isn’t straight, the path is actually longer than the track but walking along this path is enjoyable and does not seem so far at all.

The contrast is straight and curved but there is also a real contrast in terms of the experience in walking along the paths.

Curved

Straight

When editing the straight path, I noticed that in addition to the leading lines created by the edge of the path, there is also a bit of leading line created by the edges of the leaves of the palm tress.  By making the picture square, I was able to get all the lines to converge onto a vanishing point that seemed to add more depth to the picture.  I made the curved picture square to match but it does not have the same dynamism. 

5. Few / Many – Swimming Pool

A big controversy for the year in the residences that we live in is that the complex is owned by a hotel group and they have looked to exploit our area with their other hotel interests.  Where we live is blessed by a beautiful beach and pool and most of the time, this is enjoyed by the residents of our buildings.  However, at busy times the hotel has taken to shipping in residents from their other hotels and this leads to over-crowding (in the minds of us residents at least!).  If you know the area, you can always find a quiet spot away from the bustle of the pool.  The photographs show two things.  1) one area has many people but the other none.   2)  the attractiveness of the two areas is somewhat different.   

These photographs are taken no more than 5 minutes apart but the contrast between the two pictures is stark.  Perhaps for me the contrast is more than what is shown visually.  By the pool feels warm and holiday like, away from the pool feels desolate and detached; the energy between to the two places is astonishing, especially as they are only 50 meters apart.  I hope that the pictures capture this difference

Many 

Few

From a technical point of view.  The poolside picture was taken with bracketing and then I merged the pictures.  For the other picture, I took a single shot and although I have recovered a fair amount of sky, some is blown, I should also have used bracketing or a graduated filter.

6. Still / Moving - Fountain

Where we live there is a huge fountain in the walkway to get to our block and it is made with black stone. 

By night, the fountain is turned on, the stone is covered with water and so its shine reflects the lighting around the area and overall it looks good.   

By day, the fountain is turned off and the result is a very large lump of black stone that is covered with water marks and looks pretty unkempt.  

Still

Moving

Two very different views of the same thing all controlled by the water being still or moving.

7.  Sweet / Sour - Lemons

The theme for both shots is lemon, but that is the only thing common.  The fresh lemons are sour, the lemon sweets are sweet.   What struck me when taking these pictures is that there are so many other contrasts.  Healthy/Unhealthy,  Natural/Processed,  Low Calorie / High Calorie, Self wrapped / packaged.

Sweet

Sour

Such a vast range of contrasts and this exercise really led me to think about how ‘fruit’ sweets are marketed many containing the slogan ‘contains real fruit juice’, when really they are as far away from a natural product as could be.

8. Few / Many - Cranes

In its boom years, it was said that 80% of the world’s cranes were in Dubai.  It is not like that any more although there are still quite a lot around.  I was driving when I noticed this scene and it really reminded me of that time.  Such a vast amount of cranes and sky reaching machinery needed, seemingly in this scene, even for just one building.  It took me back so strongly to the boom years that I decided to capture the scene for this exercise.   

Walking around to capture the above scene, I spotted that there was a singe crane all by itself. and thus acted as a nice contrast.

Many 

Few

Reviewing these picture post capture what strikes me the most is that for the multiple crane scene, it is all about the scene.  There is no real focus on one specific crane, no real specific subject to the composition.  With the single crane, the scene is all about the crane, I managed to capture it so that it soars above and thus emphasis the size of it.

Contrast in one picture:  Small / Large - Cameras

This photograph captures one of the main discussion points related to equipment in the camera magazines.  Large DSLR or small CSC?  In the past six months I purchased the Sony Alpha 6000 CSC seen here to complement my Nikon D800.  

My conclusion is that I enjoy using them both.  I enjoy the control and usage of the DSLR and I enjoy being able to have a camera with me at all times with the CSC.    Yes the controls on the CSC are not quite as accessible and yes the quality of the photographs is slightly lower than the DSLR but these are tiny differences compared to the huge difference in size and therefore the portability.

Large and Small

As is the message of this course,  the equipment is a tiny part of creating outstanding photographs and my conclusion right now is that the grand debate serves only to distract people away from the art of photography.

Vertical and Horizontal Formats

This exercise is about understanding portrait, or vertical, composition as opposed to landscape, or horizontal.  The object of the exercise is to demonstrate that we have a habit of composing pictures in the horizontal form because that is how we look at the world.

These first two pictures were taken in Zabeel Park in Dubai at a craft fair.  In this pair I prefer the vertical photograph as I was able to capture the full height of the shoppers.  In the horizontal version their legs are cut off.  I could have moved further back but then the shoppers would not have been so prominent in the frame.

The second set of pictures was taken at the same fair.   Again, I prefer the vertical picture.  With the horizontal picture, the composition is much wider so although the store holder is larger than the vertical picture, the composition is more about the scene as a whole.  In the vertical picture, the focus is on the pictures and the store holder.  The line between the two rows of pictures also acts as a leading line to draw our attention to the lady.

The third set of pictures is also taken at the park.  Again I prefer the vertical picture.  The lines of the path and the edges of the graph form a much stronger set of leading lines to draw the viewer through the picture.  This makes it a more dynamic picture than the horizontal picture where my eye is actually drawn to the person walking across the gap.

The fourth set of pictures was taken from my apartment balcony where I live on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai.  Of the horizontal and vertical pictures I prefer the horizontal picture because there is too much space  in the foreground of the vertical one.  Looking at the vertical picture did however draw my attention to the fact that a square picture is possible.  I have lived in this apartment for two and a half years and never spotted that composition!  So even though the vertical did not work in this case, it did however provide a different perspective to then create something new.

The final set of pictures was taken at the Tower of London in the UK where the poppies have been placed for Remembrance Day.   The light was not so great on the day I went and particularly, the sky was a bright white which is  never good. I wanted to catch the poppies pouring out of the castle and I found that the vertical picture places a greater emphasis than the horizontal.

I do not think that I would have taken any of the above photographs in a vertical format ordinarily.  The exercise has taught me to stop and consider alternative compositions before taking a picture. 

Positioning The Horizon

This exercise involved taking photographs with the horizon in different places within the frame.  The pictures were taken at Jumeirah Public Beach in Dubai.

My first picture was taken with the horizon roughly 1/3 from the top.  This was the natural place for me without putting too much thought into it.  The horizon is straight but the converging diagonals to the left make it look like it is sloping.

Looking at the original picture, I decided that there was too much foreground and this made the picture unbalanced in the sense that the eye is not naturally drawn to the sea.  This picture takes the horizon to the centre of the frame. As a picture of the beach, I prefer this to the previous one as there is a better balance between the sea, the sky and the beach.

For the next picture I lowered the horizon so that the beach was not visible at all.  I don’t really like this picture as the people are shown standing but you cannot see what they are standing on – it makes one feel like the bottom of the picture is incorrectly cut off.

For the next picture, I lowered the horizon even further so that now the standing people are not visible.  This is a better picture than the previous one.  The picture emphasises the vast sky but since there is nothing in the sky at all, it does not make a particularly interesting shot.

Lastly I put the horizon right at the top of the shot.  This shots has a very strong emphasis on the foreground.  In this case the beach.  As the original shot was intended to show the sea, this is not a shot that I like.

Focal Lengths and Different Viewpoints

This exercise is almost the opposite of the previous exercise and aims to show the difference obtained by moving viewpoint rather than solely changing focal length.

In this exercise the sign at the centre of the picture was taken from some distance using a 200mm lens on a full frame digital camera.  The size of the sign is lined up along the bottom of the picture and almost to the top of the picture.

 

200mm

This second picture was taken using a 24mm lens with the position adjusted so that the size of the sign is the same as it was when using the long lens.

 

24mm

  

The exercise clearly shows that the two pictures are very different.  With the long lens, the sign in the centre and the picture is a very narrow field of view, really it is just a picture of the sign.  With the wide lens, the sign is very prominent in the centre however behind the sign, the full wide picture of the scene is visible.

This and the previous exercise show how focal length and viewpoint need to be considered when composing a shot.  Changing focal alone is sometimes the easy option, but changing position can create a very different effect too.