OCA - TAOP - Exercise 14

Exercise 14, Cropping,


The aim of this exercise is to take a handful of my previous shots and experiment with cropping to find new pictures within an original picture. This is actually something that I generally do when I process my shots, cropping them to a standard 3:2 ratio (for easy printing to 6x4) as my camera sensor does not produce images to that exact ratio - as well as cropping down images to increase the size of a subject to place more emphasis on it, such as with wildlife or where I have not been able to get close enough to, or zoom in as far as I wanted, to a subject, or to remove "undesirables" from the edges of a frame.

However, as I generally tend to crop to a 3:2 ratio I approached this exercise with the intention of ignoring the standard ratio so I would not feel limited when it came to cropping. This led to some interesting results, such as wide panoramic crops and square crops.

For these first three examples, I focused on landscapes and cropping them to a wider panoramic view;

Orignal

Crop

As you can see in this example, it is a fairly simple crop removing most of the sky and river to focus entirely on the horizon and details of the trees, hills etc. I think it works quite well, as it removes the distractions of the large expanses of sky and river meaning that the land does not feel as lost within the frame as it does in the original.

Original

Crop

Once again in this example, I have focused entirely on the horizon, removing the foreground of the field and the expanse of sky - placing emphasis on the trees and lake. This removes the distractions from the shot, as in the original I found myself focusing so heavily on the field as it takes up such a large proportion of the frame and is a very vivid green - which is extremely distracting from the rest of the frame.

Original

Crop

As my final landscape, I opted to again focus on the horizon - the Hall and the trees. I elected to crop out the trees and the building to the left of the frame to remove them as a distraction, as well as the vast majority of the sky and foreground. I also straightened the Hall slightly.

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 13

Exercise 13, Vertical & Horizontal Frames,


The aim of this exercise was to take shots framed both horizontally and vertically to see if I could make subjects work in both formats and whether the subject would favour one more than the other. I went out with the intention of capturing a variety of subjects, with the same shot taken twice, one horizontally and one vertically so I could clearly see the differences and compare them easily.

 

 

 

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 12

Exercise 12, Positioning The Horizon,


The aim of this exercise is to see where the placement of the horizon in a photograph affects the way the final image is perceived. Logically, if the horizon is placed quite low in the frame it places much more emphasis on the sky and vice versa - if the horizon is place quite high in the frame it should place much more emphasis on the landscape and foreground.

Starting from having the horizon high in the frame -

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 11

Exercise 11, Balance,

The aim of this exercise is to identify the main elements of a photograph and interpret how they affect the balance of the photograph, whether it is symmetry or shapes and objects and how they relate to one another depending on where they are placed in the frame.

For example, it is possible to balance a large element of a photograph against a smaller second element - by placing the larger element nearer to the centre of the photograph and the smaller towards the edge. Much like how a lever works, a small weight at the very far end of a lever can exert just as much force as a large weight near to the axis of the lever.

For this exercise, I used six of my photographs and identified predominant elements in each one and placed them on a "weighing scale" diagram to show how they are balanced in the photograph. The elements should be fairly easily identifiable in each example;

Here, I have identified the large door surrounded by alot of colourful graffiti near to the centre of the image balancing against the smaller door surrounded by less colourful graffiti to the far left of the photo.

In this image, I have identified several elements in the photograph that help to balance the photograph as a whole. There are two central trees on the very edges of the path and two large blocks of greenery / bushes nearer to the edges of the frame. The image is fairly symmetrical if you were to draw a line through the centre.

In this example I identified three elements to the photograph - the large central tree and the two gravestones in the foreground. The tree was mainly idenfified to give a rough central line for the symmetry and balance to take place around, this is where the two gravestones come in as they are placed in the outer thirds of the image giving a sense of balance to the image as a whole.

Here I identified the cannon and the soldier as the two main elements of this photo. The cannon takes up a much larger proportion of the frame and extends over half of the width of the frame. However the soldier stands much taller, despite taking up less width, to me this gives a sense of balance.

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 10

Exercise 10, Focal Lengths & Different Viewpoints,

The aim of this exercise is to portray how similar shots taken at different focal lengths vary in character.

The first shot I took with a telephoto lens at 200mm, the second and third were taken at 12mm on a wide angle lens.

The third image is in my opinion the most similar to the first image, as the viewpoints are not exactly identical (it would appear I am incapable of walking in a straight line!), and they vary in character greatly.

The first image was taken at 200mm and to me, it feels quite flat with no great sense of depth, though there is some depth there. It feels as though you are looking through a telescope, which is, in essence, exactly what a telephoto lens is. Everything just feels squashed together and distances between objects appears to be very small, from a glance the depth of the railings would appear to be very small, perhaps only a metre or two.

The second and third images taken at 12mm have a much greater sense of depth as you can see the side of the building disappearing down the left hand side of both images, it appears to go back much further than it does in the first image. You definately get the sense of being closer to the building in the last two images, and the height of the building is alot more imposing and obvious. In relation to the railings mentioned in the previous paragraph, you can clearly see they are much deeper / longer than would appear in the first image.

The exact composition isn't the same as it became a struggle to fill the frame with the building as closely as possible without being so close to building so I could include the wall outside.

Overall, personally, the images taken at 12mm are much more favourable than the one taken at 200mm.

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 9

Exercise 9, Focal Lengths,

In this exercise the aim is to show the difference between focal lengths and the effect it has on the angle of view. For my subject I chose Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, to give an interesting focus point in the distance and ranged my shots from 12mm - 70mm. All shots were taken whilst stood in the same place.

Starting from the shortest focal point;

12mm

14mm

18mm

24mm

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 8

Exercise 8, A Sequence Of Composition,

The aim of this exercise was to produce a sequence of compositions, capturing an event as it happens leading up to the final, best image.

I found this exercise very interesting and extremely useful as it forced me out of my comfort zone. I have never really taken any shots of people, let alone of strangers and especially in public! It was a great learning curve, which helped to build my confidence in taking shots out and about in the street.

For my subject, I had initially ventured into Nottingham city centre with the intention of capturing some of the events covering St. Georges Day at the castle, however, due to my poor planning I had arrived too late and everything had already finished. While wandering around the city centre, I could not mistake the sound of a brass band playing music, following the music, I found my subject - The William Booth Memorial Hall brass band, a part of the Salvation Army, who hold public services every sunday in the city centre.

I stayed for the whole service, taking photos following the event as it unfurled before me;

This is the initial shot, as I first found the source of the music. Here you can see they are playing mid song, shortly after arriving and setting up. From here, I decided to start trying to get shots of individuals in the band, to give a sort of introduction into the different faces and different people;

By this point I had moved over towards the left hand side of the band, as it was the clearest spot for me to stand without getting other spectators standing in the way, or being so close as to disturb the band during the service.

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 7

Exercise 7, Objects In Different Positions In The Frame

In this exercise, the intention is to see how much of a difference it makes placing a subject in different positions within the frame. Such as a central position so it punctures the background, off centre, higher and lower in the frame, to see what effect it has on the final image in relation to the background.

For my subject, I opted to take advantage of a situation when out with a friend for a walk at Beeston Weir, Nottingham, using him as a subject on a fairly plain background of a field with some detail on the horizon, so as to try not to distract focus from the primary subject as much as possible.

This initial shot places the subject in a central position in the frame, so as to "puncture" the background, drawing immediate attention as the background surrounds the subject equally. This makes the subject feel very prominent compared to the background.

These next two shots place the subject more towards the left and to the right of the frame. In both situations, it places more emphasis on the background and the foreground. The subject does not stand out as much as the initial shot, however not as much as to not immediately draw attention to the subject, it is still very prominent.

Just for fun

As I've not updated this blog for a while, and have finally started uploading my course exercises, I felt that I would like to share a few of my more recent shots just for fun, all taken in Nottingham.

Enjoy!















Right - All Saints Church

Below top - Wollaton Hall

Below Mid - Beeston Weir

Bottom - Statue, Rock Cemetery.

 

OCA - TAOP - Exercise 6

Exercise 6, Fitting The Frame To Subject;

This exercise is designed as an experiment to see how much space it takes to fill the viewfinder and how this can affect the final shot.

I chose a statue as my subject as it would enable me to move around it easily to recompose my shots.

This initial shot is just a snapshot with very little though towards composition, as it is merely to give base reference of the subject - the statue in the foreground.




The aim for this second image was to fill the frame as much as possible with the subject. However, the subject is not that tightly fitted to the frame as I decided to compose the image with as much of the pedestool out of view as I found it to be, in my opinion, large and distracting from the main subject.

The aim for this third image was to get in close and photograph just a part of it, where the subject extends beyond the edges of the frame.

The image is actually a cropped image, as I read the exercise incorrectly, see further down for the full sized image. It does however mean that I have experimented with cropping looking for new images, as requested in the exercise.

In this fourth shot, I moved back to get more background in the frame, placing more emphasis on the background. As you can clearly see, the trees in the background are far more pronounced and obvious, especially as the subject takes up alot less room in the frame.