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

A Sequence of Composition

This exercise was designed to understand how a shot develops by taking a sequence of shots from different positions whilst looking only through the viewfinder, deliberately taking the initial shots without composing as you normally would.

The shots were taken walking around Dubai Marina.  In October, the temperatures start to fall from the searing heat of the summer and it becomes possible to go outside and enjoy an outdoors Dubai.  I decided to conduct the exercise here and had no real idea as to what I was going to take, I just thought I would let the scene evolve.

Many of the buildings along the marina are quite iconic and whilst I was walking along, I noticed that there were a lot of people stopping to take photographs of themselves in front of the buildings.  I realised that capturing the people enjoying taking the photographs would be a new angle on photographing the marina.

 

In line with the brief, the first shot was not particularly composed and the result is that the people are not really the focus of the shot and the buildings are cut off at the top.

Still thinking of the buildings, I changed the orientation of the short to portrait to get the whole building in.  I realised though that although the building was now fully in shot, the picture still did not really show the people, and they were my goal.

I turned my attention away from the buildings and went a lot closer to the people.   It is now very clear that the subject is the people, and you cannot really see the buildings at all. 

Whilst this was better, I now felt that I had lost the original idea which was to show that the people were enjoying having their photograph taken in front of the buildings.   I moved around to a different side and at that point the people stopped to review what they had so far, this took out the very bright background so it is a more balanced picture but still does not show them engaging with the scene.

I moved back to where I had started and waited from them to take more photographs.  When they did, I got very close and luckily for me, they started taking pictures with the tourist trick of playing with perspective to hold buildings in hands.  I was able to capture my final shot which has the subject posed in this way and by moving slightly, I was able to get the photograph being taken by the phone into the shot by getting the phone’s screen visible.  With this I felt that I had captured the people wanting to interact with the scene behind them.

Object In Different Positions In The Frame

This exercise was to take a picture of the same object against a reasonably plain background with the object in different places within the frame. 

These pictures were taken on the outskirts of the dessert just outside the city of Dubai.  The dessert goes on and on, eventually becoming more hill but at this point very flat – it seemed to fit the brief of a featureless background.  In a 4x4 it is possible to drive endlessly through the dessert and this is something that I enjoy doing very much – indeed it is why I bought a 4x4 Jeep.  As I was by myself I could not venture out to far and it is visible in the picture that at this point, the car is on a track.  Directly behind this point there are buildings! I chose to take the pictures facing away from this and by excluding the background it is not possible to tell if these pictures are in the middle of nowhere or right on the outskirts of the town.

The first picture was taken simply by getting out of the car, walking a few paces and then just turning around and taking the picture straight off.  The picture turned out with the car in the middle of the frame.  It looks a bit static and the horizon is cutting through the middle of the car, as this can be seen through the windows, it draws attention when looking at the car.

 

Initial Non-composed Shot

The remainder of the pictures were taken with the car at different places around the frame: Top Centre, Top Left, Top Right, Middle Centre, Middle Left, Middle Right, Bottom Centre, Bottom Left and Bottom Right. 

The pictures where the car is to the left do not look right at all.  The car looks to be literally driving out of the frame – even though it is possible to see that there is no driver. 

 

Bottom Left

Top Left

Middle Left

The pictures with the car in the centre rectify this to some extent but the positioning is still similar to the original photograph, the car looks very static. 

 

Bottom Centre

Top Centre

The pictures with the car to the right look much more natural, the car has space to drive into.

With the car in the top corner, the perspective of the background has changed; it does not seem to flow out into the distance.  

Top Right

With the car in the middle, I much prefer the background which now looks to extend away but the horizon split is still visible through the windows.  

Middle Right

With the car in the bottom corner, the horizon still cuts the car but not in the windows, the background appears to expand away more giving a better feel of the vastness of the dessert and this is enhanced further with a matching big sky.  Oddly, I think there is a 'rule' that says don't put horizons in the centre of a picture and that is where this one has ended up however on this occasion it helps emphasise the size of the dessert and the sky and works well.

Bottom Right

My favourite is therefore the picture with the car in the bottom right corner