Exercise: Positioning the horizon

I took a lot photographs for this exercise, finding the majority wholly unsatisfactory.  In the end I settled on this sequence which I shot in beautiful Marks Hall grounds.

I am showing only three here as these aptly illustrate the point required in this exercise.

Here I have a high horizon.  The high positioning of the horizon places considerably more importance on the foreground and here I attempted to provide this interest through the use of the walled bank on the right which also provides the lead in and depth through to the horizon.  In this case I also had interest in the reflection in the still water of the lake.  I like this placing of the horizon as it gives much more strength than where the horizon is placed in other positions.

With the horizon placed centrally (almost) more emphasis is placed here on the symmetry of the reflection of the sky in the water.  The walled bank on the right is still providing interest, however, overall I feel that there is less drama than when the horizon was high and it is much more static.

Here, with a low horizon there is much more need to find interest in the sky.  Fortunately the sky on this this day had some nice fine weather cumulous cloud formations which provided a degree of interest.  Interestingly there is seemingly less depth here than in the first, high horizon, picture.

Exercise: Balance

I found this exercise both easy and difficult.  There were some technical issues to conquer along the way, which I solved by the very timely purchase of a cheap Hanvon Tablet.  It really made a great differenc, as prior to that I was seriously struggling with my presentation.

My prior photographs basically fall into two categories:  those where balance is evident and those where I struggle to find it.  The latter group is also where my less successful images reside!

I would certainly agree with the text, that the simpler the composition of the photograph, the easier it is to determine where the balance is; ie which elements of the photograph are key to the composition.  I reached for the various reading matter which I have accumulated and also borrowed from the local library.  Looking at "street photographers" such as Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Robert Doisneau and Marcel Bovis, in the excellent book by Clive Scott on Street Photography, I observed how they made use of balance to provide strength to a photograph.  The balance then implies a relationship between the design elements in the photograph.

In the first of my sequence of six photographs, the balance is seen between the large mass of the light coloured pyramid and the dark foliage of the relatively small tree in the bottom right.

Again, in this photograph, I have two objects which are dissimilar in size and the balance is achieved by the large mass of the clothes being close to the centre and the much smaller girl located towards the edge of the frame.  In this case of "river photography" the subject was very much aware of my presence!



In this photograph I am balancing the dark group of three people standing on the top of a set of steps on the roof of one of Gaudi's buildings in Barcelona, against the large mass of light coloured stone steps.  The steps in themselves provide movement from light to dark and this provides an additional design element in the picture.

In the picture above, colour provides the balancing element.  The cooler large mass of green is counter-balanced by the smaller areas of the hotter / stronger red and orange.

This image, obtained on a bridal shoot at the beginning of this year, utilises the large mass of dark colour and almost featureless concrete as a couterpoint to the smaller, lighter and soft image of the bride in her veil.  The large area of featureless space, I have also heard referred to as "negative" space.  I have to admit to liking this design "feature" and have made use of it in several of my photographs.

I took this photograph because of the elements which utilised the colour blue.  There is a multiplicity of lines joining and balancing the areas of blue - the large area of blue in the boat at the bottom and the blu in the sky as well as that in the closed window shutters.

Overall, an enjoyable exercise which gave me the beginnings of an insight in to one of the main design elements - that of balance.

Its been a while........

Since I wrote something up in my Learning Blog.  Life and work certainly intrudes into ones activities, and, though I have been working on and pulling together the exercises for part 1 of TAOP, I have found it so difficult to devote the time to getting it all edited and finalised for publication on the Blog.

Today, I am clearing that backlog and hopefully may even be able to add some other thoughts along the way.  At least, whilst travelling for work and staying in numerous hotels, there is always the opportunity to read!

So here goes......

Restarting the journey, again

Today I contacted the admin team at the OCA and am restaring my journey towards the degree which I interrupted last year.  The paperwork will come through in a few days, I'm told, so I guess its time to get back to work.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010

Just a reminder that I must go to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2010.  I have been to this exhibitin for a few years now and each time have found it really exciting.

A summary of the exhibition, quoted from the NPG web site, is below:

"The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 presents the very best in contemporary portrait photography, showcasing the work of talented young photographers and gifted amateurs alongside that of established professionals and photography students.

Through editorial, advertising and fine art images, the entrants have explored a range of themes, styles and approaches to the contemporary photographic portrait, from formal commissioned portraits to more spontaneous and intimate moments capturing friends and family.

This year the competition attracted nearly 6,000 submissions from over 2,400 photographers from around the world. The selected sixty works for the exhibition include the four prize-winners and the winner of the ELLE commission.

Exhibiting many photographs for the first time, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 is a unique opportunity to see images by some of the most exciting contemporary portrait photographers working today."

http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/photoprize/site10/index.php

The John Stezaker exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery

This looks like a really fascinating exhibition, looking at the images on the Whitechapel Gallery website. I will certainly be going there in February!  The following is a description from the Whitecchapel Gallery website:

"British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

This first major exhibition of John Stezaker offers a chance to see work by an artist whose subject is the power in the act of looking itself. With over 90 works from the 1970s to today, the artist reveals the subversive force of images, reflecting on how visual language can create new meaning.

John Stezaker is organised by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Mudam, Luxembourg."

Exercise: Focal lengths and different viewpoints

For this exercise, I did not venture very far - the primary subject is a statue, in Braintree, of a young boy holding a shell with sea lions around the base, sculpted by John Hodge.  The statue was commissioned by W J Courtauld in 1937.  In the background is St Michael's Church.

I endeavoured to try and match the size of the subject in both photographs.  I took the photos using my 24-105mm lens.  This allowed me to, exagerate the effect of the differences in perspective caused by changing the focal length and re-positioning the camera.

The first photograph, below, was shot at 105mm focal length.  This gives a reasonably natural look, though the perspective is somewhat flattened and very little can be seen of the church in the background.

In the second shot, below, I moved in close in order to be able to have the statue of a similar size to the previous shot.  The effect is quite staggering, in particular with the extreme compression of the background emabling the whole of the church steeple to be seen as well as the distortion of the subject due to the proximity of the lens.  Considerably more of the surroundings can be seen and it is much clearer to the viewer that the subject is part of a larger fountain and that, in the background, there is a church.