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.

Focal Lengths

This exercise takes a photograph from the same spot at a wide and long focal length.  The aim of the exercise is to demonstrate that although the object that is taken with the long length appears to be closer, the perspective of the picture does not change – it is in fact identical to the small equivalent area in the wide shot.

The photographs were taken at Dubai Internet City, the place where I work.  They were taken with a full frame digital camera at 24mm and 200mm focal lengths.

 

24mm

200mm

The picture below is cropped from the centre of the wide 24mm shot above.  It can be seen that it is the same as the 200mm shot in all respects.  The quality is lower as it represents a tiny portion of the original picture but the changes in perspective that would have occurred if I had actually moved closer rather than using a longer lens have not occurred (this is the subject of the next exercise).

Cropped from 24mm Picture