Tuesday 10 May 2011

Exercise: Rhythms and patterns

Following on from the preceding commentary, is an exercise where the brief asks for at least 2 photographs; to convey rhythm and to show pattern.  I have taken several photographs in my quest to demonstrate this and have chosen two of each as representative.

Rhythm

Barn wall:  ISO 200  105mm f14 1/125
 I have given this image a tight horizontal crop as I feel that this works well and accentuates the design so that the viewer's eye can move from point to point in a rythmical way.  To make this work, I have taken this at a slight angle and compressed the perspective using a telephoto lens setting.  By using f14 as the aperture, I provided sufficient sharpness across the image.  The eye movement is from black post to black post and some lingering with the brickwork framed by the posts.
Mongol bows:  ISO 400  84mm f4  1/60
A pretty "neutral" arrangement of the bows arranged in a tent at a medieval fair.  The angle / curvature of the bows is such that the eye is led across the frame from left to right.  I used the widest aperture available to me on that lens as I wanted to reduce and remove distractions from the background, however this was not entirely successful.  Again, I have used a tight crop to match the flow.

Patterns

Arrows:  ISO 200  65mm  f4  1/1000
 The photograph of the arrows standing vertically in a container has created a significant pattern.  I used a shallow deoth of field to try and add to the abstract quality of this pattern.  A tight crop gives the suggestion that there is more to this pattern than can be seen immediately.  This certainly works for me!

Leather bags:  ISO 200  35mm f5.6  1/125
 This time the pattern is made up of clearly visible and identifiable objects.  They are suspended on a grid and by cropping, the suggestion is that there are more bags to be seen and that the pattern extends beyond the present boundary which I have imposed.  In my view the pattern works with a limited number of objects and the viewer can try to organise them into shapes.

A bit of both?

Footpath:  ISO 200  24mm f16  1/80
Within the walled garden in Cressing Temple, the footpaths are made of this brick, herringbone design.  When I took this shot, the sky had clouded over, so I enhanced this slightly in Lightroom, giving an extra 1/2 stop exposure and moving the left hand side of the histogram until black clipping just occurs.  The effect has been to give greater clarity to the design.

The question is whether this shows rhythm or whether it is a pattern.  I shot this initialy with pattern in mind, however, looking at it on the screen there seems to be more than just a suggestion of flow across the frame, in both directions.  Therefore should this be classified as rhythm?

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