Exercise 14 – Cropping

For this exercise we were asked to pick three images previously taken and look at possible crops.

 Orignal

Crop

I took this photograph in our back garden last winter, our first in our new house.  As we put quite a lot of food out for the birds and squirrels our garden was very popular and I liked how the red breasted robin stood out in the snowy conifers.  I couldn’t get any closer without frightening him so though this was ideal image to crop and show what I would have done in camera if I had been able to get closer.

 Original

Crop

This was a photograph I took while on holiday in the Lake District last year, I really liked the wooden row boats which were lined up and the wooden posts with hills of the Lake District in the back ground.  However I tried a crop on this to see if the photograph would have worked better if I had just concentrated on the nearest row boat and wooden posts.  I really like the result it give much more emphasis on the row boat.

Original

 Crop

For my third Photograph I chose this portrait I took at a wedding a while ago.  After I had taken the formal shots people were milling around before heading off for the reception and I took a few reportage images during this time.  I thought this one would be perfect for cropping to a landscape head and shoulder shot.  The result gives a lot more focus on the couple and the eye is not distracted by the extra shoulder and arm on the right of the original or the busy skirt the lady is wearing.

Exercise 13 - Vertical and Horizontal Frames

For this exercise we were asked to take 20 photographs vertically and then to retake the same 20 photographs but horizontally.  I went to Stony Stratford this afternoon , as there was an event on at Horsefair Green to capture these images.

For some of them it was easier to get a good composition vertically but harder horizontally and for some the other way round.

The point of the exercise is to show that subjects can be photographed both horizontally and vertically although it takes a little more thought.

Having looked back over the images I’ve posted already to my blog approx. a third of them have been vertical so in future I will be making sure I turning the camera round and consider photographing scenes vertical more often.

Below are a selection of the images I have taken for this exercise, all of the images taken are on my flickr site:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/csp1/sets/72157627130128297/with/6094367316/

 F6.3, ISO400, 1/100s, 37mm

F7.1, ISO400, 1/100s, 27mm

F5.6, ISO400, 1/50s, 47mm

F7.1, ISO400, 1/80s, 31mm

F13, ISO400, 1/250s, 34mm

F10, ISO400, 1/200s, 55mm

F8, ISO400, 1/125s, 37mm

F9, ISO400, 1/160s, 53mm

F9, ISO400, 1/125s, 45mm

F8, ISO400, 1/125s, 55mm

F7.1, ISO400, 1/100s, 38mm

F7.1, ISO400, 1/100s, 25mm

F7.1, ISO200, 1/100s, 55mm

F7.1, ISO200, 1/100s, 55mm

Thinking about Assignment 1

I am getting close to finishing the exercises in Part 1 now, just two left to go and am starting to give more thought to the first assignment.  While doing the exercises I have had the assignment in mind and taken some photographs that I thought I might use.

One contrast I wanted to do was dark/light. 

I took this photograph with Dark in mind early on, it was during a late evening walk around one of the lakes in Milton Keynes and I really like the dark, menacing feel to the image, the silhouette of the bird flying into the dying sunlight adds a much needed focal point and really makes the photograph work.

As a contract to this I wanted the photograph for Light to also to be a sky scene and yesterday between the showers the perfect opportunity came to capture the photograph which I think is a perfect contrast.  It was taken in monochrome, with a red filter and a blue tone.

The other contrast I’ve had in mind for a while is Straight/Curved.  As soon as I saw this one I though about staircases.

I remembered a set of steep(ish) straight steps that lead from the car park up to the peace pagoda at Willen which I had photographed many years ago in Autumn so headed there.  I took several images on the day but have settled on this photograph for straight, I decided to use black and white for this contrast to emphasis the shapes and remove and distractions colour may have caused.

There is set of metal spiral steps on the outside of the Odeon cinema ‘The Point’ in Central Milton Keynes and this is what I have photographed for Curved.