The Brief

Find a scene that has depth.  From a fixed position, take a sequence of five or six shots at different focal lengths without changing your viewpoint. (You might want to use the specific focal length indicated on the lens barrel).  As you page through the shots on the preview screen if feels as though you are moving through the scene.

Research

The course notes make reference to Ridley’ Scott’s Blade Runner, which is one of my favourite science fiction films.  I have been a fan in large part because of the close relationship between what could be real science or engineering, and the fiction that the film envelops it in.  Growing up, the predictions of this century were all around voice control, self-driving flying cars and artificial intelligence.  While cars don’t fly, the rest is pretty much here including the ability to resolve images in ultra-high resolution.  Deckard’s scanner is almost real, only separated from reality by the 3D exploration of a 2D image.  We can, however forgive that level of artistic licence.  In reviewing Google’s gigapixel work, it’s clear that the technology is hugely impressive but the real interest is in what the extreme zoom capability reveals that could be missed from the more distant viewpoint.  The painting that caught my eye was Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring”, a very famous, and often copied image.  I’ve always been superficially impressed by it, but with the gigapixel, the ability to explore the micro detail of the painting gave me a new appreciation of it.

 

 

The original canvass is only 17.5 inches by 15 inches in size, which makes the detail of the painting closeup extraordinary.  Looking at the eyeball itself, we can see subtle shadowing near the lower eyelid and both colour and texture in the cornea.  Vermeer painted this with attention to these details as well as the subtle highlight and shadow detail around the face and was known to use a camera obscure to accurately assess the way that light was falling on the subject [2].  To think he did this in the 17th Century with whatever light was available and his own imagination, I find remarkable.   Except for the fact that there are many painters of this era who were achieve similar feats.  What surprised me is how the technology of the modern digital camera provides us with these insights.

This reminded me of one of my favourite artists, David Hockney who presented an exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy of Art in 2012 [1].  I went to this exhibition and the paintings that struck me the most were a series called Yosemite.  Hockney had created artworks that were 365.8 cm by 274.3 cm made up from an assembly of 6 prints made on dibond paper.  This in itself wasn’t the unusual aspect, because Hockney had ‘painted’ each panel on an Apple iPad.   In the reverse situation to Deckard’s extreme blow-up of a small print, Hockney achieved a huge painting by working at the micro level first.   The effects were a series of beautiful paintings as digital prints as shown below.

 

My plan

I have a mix of lenses for my DSLRs that include fixed focal length, or prime lenses, wide angle and telephoto zoom lenses.  For this exercise I decided to use the Nikon 70 to 200mm f2.8 lens as it offers the longest range of focal lengths and has very high quality glass elements.   For the location, I chose Great Malvern’s railway station platform, which is a typical example found in a Victorian town.

When I arrived I realised, quite reasonably that the railway station did not allow tripods.  For my set, I was going to have to hand hold so I went with the following settings.

1. Aperture Priority set at f11.
2. ISO200.
3. Manual focus –  to begin with, I did not want to re-focus and re-meter between shots.  I picked the coffee sign as the point of focus.
4. Setting 70, 85, 105, 135 and 200mm as per the lens barrel markings.

My Images

The first noticeable issue is that reading the focal length markings on such a large lens while handheld is a major challenge.  It’s particularly noticeable between 70 and 85mm, where although my position and viewpoint haven’t changed, the position of the clock in the scene is slightly higher than it should be.

Nevertheless, scrolling through the images, one gets the sense of walking along the station platform toward the cafe. The subjects within the composition exit the frame with increased zoom and the effect of the image depth being reduced is clear as the focal length approaches 200mm – note the apparent reduction in distance between the rail at the end of the platform and the white sign.  By using a smaller aperture, the signs and clock are acceptably sharp (while not totally so).

Reflection

A tripod would have improved the accuracy of the zoom, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise.  What I’ve got from it, and by recalling and reviewing the film references in the brief, is that the image can start with one viewpoint and change to another through using zoom.  As with Deckard viewing the photographs in Bladerunner, everything that is of less interest falls outside of the frame, leaving a narrow window on the subject.  If used in a composition without changing viewpoint, the subject itself can be completely different.  In my case, I looked at the images I shot for this exercise and saw something that amused me; the way the signs direct the viewer.  For my final shot for the set, I took P4 and used a tight crop, effectively throwing away most of the frame.  The subjects are now isolated from the railway platform; no longer obvious where the photograph was taken and they stand on their own in relation to each other.

What I have learned from this exercise is that although I already knew that a longer focal length creates a narrower field of view than a shorter one, zooms can be used to creatively alter what we want the image to say.

References

1. Hockney, David 2012 – A Bigger Picture Exhibition Book, Royal Academy of Arts
2. Johannes Vermeer and his Paintings, http://www.johannes-vermeer.org, accessed 14th December 2018

 

 

The Brief

Read the reviews by Campany and Colberg (of Thomas Ruff’s Jpegs Series) and, if you haven’t already done so, use them to begin the Research section of your learning log.  Try to pick out the key points made by each writer.  Write about 300 words.

My Analysis of the Reviews

What immediately struck me from reading these reviews was the difference in the writers’ appraisal of Ruff’s art.  Both draw on the aesthetic appeal of his images and highlight the almost accidental nature of them coming into being.  Campany draws our attention to the fact that the aesthetic of the imperfection of a photograph can ask questions about how the image was created, and indeed looking at the Capa example from the Omaha Beach landings, it is easy to get a sense of panic and haste; the environment not being conducive to formality in composition nor technical accuracy.  The fact that the effect was accidentally achieved by mistakes in the darkroom later is less important, almost irrelevant to the viewer.  Campany’s paper also highlights that while Ruff’s approach  to create art could be compared to the use of large grain by film artists, it speaks to the nature of the modern age; ordered and ‘digital’.  Our daily lives are dominated by electronic representations of photographs, a point emphasised at the beginning of this course with the ‘ccamera’ app, which I personally found to be both impressive and shocking in its scale.  Both writers highlight Ruff’s use of other people’s images to create his art, beginning with his failed attempt to photograph the events of 911 (Photo 1).  For me, the idea of creating art from other’s photographs where I have failed, is completely alien.  It begs the question ‘Why?’ even if the results are aesthetically pleasing.  Campany goes on to highlight Jpegs and similar work are part of a gradual shift in how we see digital pixels.  Far from being simply logical, mathematically derived arrangements in an image, they can convey a completely different perspective depending on the subject.  I look to explore this in my conclusions.  However, Colberg’s review of Jpegs seems a lot less forgiving of the use of pixels, suggesting that while clever and beautiful, the creative effect appears shallow and almost too easy to achieve.

Ruff’s Images

I’ve chosen two of Ruff’s images, one from Jpegsand the other from a later series called Jpegs II to try to describe how I interpret this style of art.  The first is from the original photographs of 911 and is in itself an incredibly moving image.  The pixilation of Ruff’s version for me offers a modern filter of ‘order’ through which the chaos of the events are witnessed.  The beauty of the familiar shapes of the New York skyline appear shuffled from what is expected but the eye lingers to try to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.   The second image of a stranded boat on a low tide doesn’t work for me in the same intense way.  The pixels order nature, which emphasises the beauty of the light as well as the formality of the composition, but the impact is not as great as the first image as it lends itself more to impressionist art as an aesthetic.   I conclude from how this makes me feel, that I am more in agreement with Colberg than Campany; the technique is very dependent on what is happening in the photograph and loses its impact if the subject does not support it.  In the case of the above, both have clear ‘formal quality’ to begin with, but in applying the same technique to both, the aesthetic is very different.  I would be interested to see an image where the effect was planned when shot, rather than as a retrospective action.

My images, in the style of Ruff

I selected the above photographs to try to validate my interpretation of pixels as an aesthetic.  The first is from Exercise 1.4, a neon sign in my home town.  The second is a waterfall I shot on holiday in North Yorkshire recently.  In the Photo 1, the lines and squares in the image are softened by the pixellation, but the sign is still readable.  The sky, which was fairly neutral now has texture akin to daubs of paint one might find in an impressionist painting.  The problem for me is that the effect is wasted on this image as there is no drama in the subject.  When reviewing Photo 2, the subject has drama in the long exposure of the water falling over the rocks.  The rocks themselves are a structure of blocks owing to many years of erosion.  The pixellation of the image applies some order to a naturally disordered scene, which has a similar effect on me as the 911 photo by Ruff.

When I think of the Capa example in Campany’s review (Photo 3), the subject is greatly enhanced by the visual effect of blur, but the drama is already in the frame – imagine how it would have looked had the darkroom assistant not hurried the film’s development.

Like all aspects of art and in particular photography, the aesthetic is subjective.  I like what I’ve seen of Ruff’s work, but believe it to be an approach that emphasises the need to relate to the subject and composition of the frame.

The Brief

The final exercise of this project makes use of the viewfinder grid display of a digital camera.  This function projects a grid onto the viewfinder screen to help align vertical and horizontal lines, such as the horizon or the edge of a building, with the edge of the frame.

Take a good number of shots, composing each shot within a single section of the viewfinder grid.  Don’t bother about the rest of the frame!  Use any combination section, subject and viewpoint you choose.

When you review the shots evaluate the whole frame, not just the part you’ve composed. Look at a frame calmly and without hurry may eventually reveal a visual coalescence, a ‘gestalt’.

Gestalt: an organised whole perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

My Approach

In preparation for this exercise, I began by looking into the viewfinder grid function of my camera.  Indeed the D4 and D300 (my two DSLRs) have this function and it has been switched on ever since I first started using both cameras.  During everyday use, I’ve lined up horizontal and vertical lines with the grid instinctively as part of my push  to do less editing in Lightroom.  When I have to make a correction, I find these days that the angle and subsequent lost of the edges of the frame are greatly reduced by trying to get it right in the camera first. The grid is shown below.

In addition to the grid that the rule of thirds produces, there is also a central horizontal and horizontal line that further divides the frame.  This would make the exercise more of a challenge as I would need to place the subject carefully into 1/16th of the area of the frame.

Looking at some of the other work on this exercise by other students, I noted that some had found the variety of the compositions resulted in distracting colours.  Indeed when I look at the 3×3 grid provided in the brief, the first thing I notice is the colour.  When reviewing the photographer’s blog, it’s clear that they intended to use colour and tone to unify the final 9 images, and it works well.  As the brief starts with the intent that only the subject is placed in a segment of the viewfinder and the rest of the frame ignored, I concluded that this may have been a choice after all of the photographs had been selected.  The second part of the brief called for a final set that hangs together and individually.  This was the thing that interested me in the first assignment as having some form of connection or narrative was so far a departure from what I was used to.  I decided at this point to keep it simple and ‘minimal’     By ‘minimal’, my vision was to have them all as monochrome, no cropping or adjusting of the subject position within its box (tempting, for sure) and with only adjustment of contrast applied to each.

My Photographs

 

 

Evaluation

Photo 1

The recent announcement of this grand property being up for sale was not really a surprise to the locals as its reputation as a club wasn’t the greatest.  When looking at this again, the sign advertising it as a venue suggests defiance in the face of closure.

Photo 2

The stacks of the leisure centre.  I was drawn to the left hand one which was ‘operating’. But what of the other one?  Is it just getting started?  The other element that appears in the frame is the old stone wall separating the modern from the Victorian Winter Gardens.

Photo 3

Something had been tied in this tree but all that remains is the string.  The Winder Gardens frequently has events throughout the summer, so perhaps it was holding bunting of some sort.  The tree has no leaves, suggesting winter has arrived, but on closer viewing, it is actually in bud.

Photo 4

Malvern is well known for its gas lamps.  This one in the Priory has just been lit as the light fades.  Looking around the frame, the large imposing tree sits on a junction between two paths; the lamp helping guide one along either.

Photo 5

Litter is a problem in any town.  In Malvern, the stone walls provide spaces for litter to be dropped.  This drinks can has been here a long time and is obscured by the hedge that lines the wall.

Photo 6

There was once a sign on the side of this building near the Priory.  What did it say and why was it no longer considered needed?  The door points to an ecclesiastical building, but in fact the space is occupied by a small business.

Photo 7

Malvern is often considered a retirement town.  What I hadn’t spotted was the relationship between the sign and the leafless trees, both Autumnal.

Photo 8

I’ve always smiled when I’ve seen this neon sign.  Today as I walked past, it had just been switched on and not all of the letters had become their vibrant pink.  The gloomy sky suggests that the sign needs to go to work.

Photo 9

Malvern Link common.  The bench is empty, perhaps because of the gloomy weather.  The leaves on the ground suggest Autumn.

Photo 10

Darwin’s daughter was brought to Malvern in a last effort to be cured by the waters, believed at the time to have healing properties.  Alas, she didn’t recover and is buried here.

Photo 11

Someone is not ready to replace their old house number sign.  Clearly ageing badly, a quick painting of the number 1 should make it last a little longer.

Photo 12

Cleaning rag or something left to be rediscovered?  I had not seen the line of leaves following the gradient of the steps, creating both a leading line and showing the change of season.  Perhaps the cloth is a piece of clothing dropped by a passer-by.

Photo 13

Gone.  A well earned break in local cafe.  The cake fork points to the remains of the treat.  I was aware that the cafe had emptied the I took this shot, which is seen in the relatively empty space of the rest of the frame.

Photo 14

This squirrel in the Winter Gardens was foraging on the path fairly close to me.  It was a very quick composition which meant that I didn’t notice the fallen leaves or the line of the fence that leads the eye away to the top right of the frame and on, presumably to the rest of the park.

Photo 15

With Armistice Day only a couple of weeks ago, this little row of crosses in the Priory caught my eye.  I deliberately used a shallow depth of focus to pick out the front one, but the memorial can still be recognised in the foreground. A leading line leads the away and into the priory cloister.

Photo 16

I saw the duck resting on the side of the lake in the Winter Gardens and in positioning it in the lower right segment, inadvertently framed it within the railings.  I then noticed the diagonal line separating land from the water and providing the other frame edge for the duck.

Reflection – The Frame

The final part of this exercise was to assemble a set from the photographs shot that work as a set.  In the selection, a theme began to emerge that I hadn’t considered when shooting, one of ‘The End’.  Each picture in itself describes a finality, from the end of summer, through the closure or sale of a business and on to the simple act of finishing a cake.  I think this theme started to become clear to me with the photo of the neon sign.  I’ve seen it during daytime when it has nothing interesting about it, and in the evening when it makes a bold statement.  I had inadvertently caught the time where it was preparing for the end of the day but hadn’t fully switched on as yet.  Reviewing the other photographs, I was able to find a collection that described many aspects of ‘The End’ and how some frames also contained both permanent as well as temporary conclusion.  The brief refers to ‘gestalt’, which I think is achieved by this set.  Arguably, having 16 segments in my viewfinder grid meant that there was more work, more images and more likelihood of creating a set.  However, multiple variations of the theme emerge from these 16 photographs, which no single image conveys; a gestalt.

What I’ve learned from this exercise is that being mindful of the frame as well as the subject is important, but that framing is something that does come naturally at times.  In my case, I found it very difficult to follow the advice in the brief to ‘ignore the rest of the frame’ as I instinctively want to reduce the likelihood how distraction.  In each of the photographs, I believe I kept things out of the frame that should not be there, but the interesting aspect is what was before my eyes but unnoticed.   The best example for me was the duck, framed by lines and tones when all I intended to do was place it in the bottom right of the photograph.   We should really look beyond the obvious and strive to create something interesting rather than simply follow photographic rules.

 

The Brief

Take a number of shots using lines to create a sense of depth.  Shooting with a wide-angle lens (zooming in and out) strengthens a diagonal line by giving it more length within the frame.  The effect is dramatically accentuated if you choose a viewpoint close to the line.

This exercise is divided into two parts, the first being the use of leading lines to create depth and the second being the counter to this; using the lines to remove depth and create an abstract photograph.

Part 1

For Part 1, the works of Eugene Atget are referred to as examples of using lines in make the photograph three dimensional.  At first glance, his ‘documents pour artistes’, shot in Paris in the early part of the 20th Century, we see a seemingly ordinary set of documentary images.  Atget had indeed set out to simply document the changing face of Paris through its architecture.  Unlike the street photographers that followed him, Atget used people and way of life to supplement his commentary on Paris rather than how the city had influenced its people.   What he developed during this exploration of his home, was a style of photography that makes the viewer forget that this is a flat, two-dimensional image.   He influenced a great many photographers posthumously, but none more than Berenice Abbott.  She discovered his work fairly late in his life and went about purchasing as many negatives as possible.  After his death, Abbott published much of Atget’s work, establishing him firmly in the photography greats.  While interesting enough, it’s the influence on Abbott that appeals to me as I became familiar with her work a few years ago when we purchased a print of her 1932 photograph ‘Oyster Houses, South Street and Pike Slip’, shown below.  She had met Atget through Man Ray, whom she was working for as an assistant at the time.  Her photography was itself in its infancy, so it should be of little surprise that Atget’s work should be such an influence on her.

When I first saw this photograph, my emotional response was the awe at the sense of scale between the fairly substantial ‘houses’  set against the massive Manhattan Bridge in New York City.  The next was a sadness that these houses, which were in fact floating barges on the East River, had all but disappeared save for the odd museum piece.  The mighty bridge spans an entirely different shoreline now.   I had not considered how Abbott creates the sense of scale that initially grabbed me prior to look into Atget’s work.  In reviewing again, the dominant span of the bridge gives a sense of depth and width even thought the image is a portrait orientation.  The depth is further emphasised by the track of the Brooklyn Bridge to the right.  If the barges were not breaking the line created by it, the viewer can picture the intersection of the two bridges in the distance off the left-hand side of the frame.  In addition to the depth the two subjects create, Abbott further emphasises the scale by introducing the height of the bridge, which is a vertical line that stretches into the sky.  The cables of the bridge lead to this point from the left and right of the frame where the top of the bridge and it’s architectural detail are found. They in turn sit on the ‘left third’ line in the picture.  Finally, the use of the bridge span to frame the oyster barges in the lower part of the image creates the visual tension where the eye is left to explore the rest of the frame.    For me, a beautiful image but more importantly a technique the Abbott used in a great number of her New York street photographs in the 1930s, a fairly short time after Aget’s death in 1927.  Some other examples of her work that demonstrate a similar vision are shown below.

Abbott was a great technical photographer and later became a teacher at the New School for Social Research [1].  Although she taught photography, she combined her experience of surrealism gained with photographers such as Man Ray, with an interest in the sciences.  She photographed a number of physics phenomena after leaving the school, most notable being the tracing of light rays.  Some of these images link directly to the Part 2 of this exercise.

My approach

The three things I wanted to explore with leading lines were the effects of focal length, aperture and crop on the sense of depth created.   I already appreciated the difference that focal length can have on perspective as I’ve shot many landscapes in my time as a photographer.  Short focal length lenses offer wide angles, long distances between near and far subjects, but introduce distortion depending on the angle that the lens is to the subject.  It’s particularly noticeable at short distances on vertical lines, such as tall buildings.   Perspective distortion can be an interesting effect but can be a problem if the intent is to create something that maintains a sense of reality about it.  Long focal lengths, by contrast have the effect of shortening the perceived distance between near and far objects but give little sense of depth or distortion.  Larger apertures offer the ability to pick out a subject by intensifying the out-of-focus regions, dependent on the focal length and relative distances of between subjects and the background.  Smaller apertures have the inverse effect.  Add the crop ratio of the image, do these factors change the way the depth or scale of the image appears when leading lines are involved?

Reviewing the images by Berenice Abbott, the effect of the out of focus areas in the image accentuate the sense of depth, particularly in the Manhattan Bridge image.    The final aspect is crop.  Does a tighter crop impact the effect caused by the combination of the other techniques?

My images

In the above shots, the end of the railing appears closer to the viewer in Photo 1 than Photo 2.  The shots are not taken from precisely the same position but the curvature of the rail as it leads into the photographs have very different perspectives.

In the photographs above, the difference is again very noticeable.  In the case of Photo 4, the very wide angle lens at 17mm creates a sense of the For Sale sign being much further away than in Photo 3.  The inclusion of the building and parked cars owing to the increased field of view, adds to the depth of the image.

Now with the addition of increased aperture from f8 to f2.8 (the focal point still being the signpost), the negligible difference between the far-field, out-of-focus elements in Photos 4 and 5 is barely noticeable.   The same cannot be said for the near-field, where the railing is more blurred in Photo 5.  We’d expect this for such a short focal length, but what it also shows is no discernible difference in the sense of depth of the photograph.   Note: Photo 5 is a slightly different composition and exposure as I had to move out of the way of the lady who walked past.  This doesn’t change the point being made, however.  Reviewing Abbott’s Manhattan Bridge photograph again, the effect that makes the difference is actually more likely haze from pollution in the city.  It certainly adds to the drama of the image.

The final element I wanted to look into was the effect of cropping.  Photos 6 and 7 are the same shot, cropped differently, 5×7 and 1×1 (Square) respectively.

Naturally, cropping changes the composition and arguably, the square now doesn’t work as the signpost is too close to the right-hand edge.  However, the depth of the image doesn’t really change.  What I conclude from this is that as long as the line suits the composition, in this case leading the eye along the Malvern stone wall to the edge of the town, the same approach applies regardless of the crop.

Other Leading Line Images

I took many photographs during this exercise, with a few of them shown below.

Review

Photo 8

The lines on the road are as clear direction as the eye needs, but the building also adds it’s own depth, broken only by the cafe sign.

Photo 9

This stairway alongside a hotel in town tracks the contour of the hillside.  I tried to trick the eye with a distorted railing in the near-field, but the overwhelming leading line is seemingly unbroken as it leads away.

Photo 10

Inspired by Cartier-Bresson’s  Hyeres, France, 1932, that I used in Exercise 1.2, this shot of the staircase demonstrates depth in following the line towards the figure at the bottom of the stairs.  It was captured quickly, which didn’t give the opportunity to remove the leaf from the steps, which unfortunately acts as a distraction.

Part 2

Now take a number of shots using lines to flatten the pictorial space.  To avoid the effects of perspective, the sensor/film plane should be parallel to the subject and you may like to try a high viewpoint (i.e. looking down).  Modern architecture offers strong lines and dynamic diagonals, and zooming in can help to create simpler, more abstract compositions.

Research

Having looked at the concepts of leading the eye around the photograph as a pleasurable experience, this part of the exercise pushes the viewer to suspend their immediate assumptions about the subject matter.  The brief material mentions Bauhaus, a design school in Germany that was open throughout the 1920s and closed in 1933 with the rise of the Nazi party.  Bauhaus was intended to bring the two seemingly different fields together, applied art and manufacturing [2].  At first glance, it would be difficult to see a direct link between them.  However the guiding principles about simplicity in design, that is the removal of the extraneous, leaving something that doesn’t overcomplicate when viewed, yet appreciated for its execution.  In manufacturing, a product is easier, more cost effective to produce if the design is simple to begin with.  Bauhaus artists produced modern designs for furniture that minimised both the aesthetic qualities of the finished article, but reduced the production to only the material and assembly the was more important.  An example of this is their famous use of tubular metal in a, now common, office chair design (below).  This simplicity in turn gave the artists more scope for experimentation with materials that had fewer considerations when incorporated into a product, for example the fixing of the covers of the chair being incorporated as ties in the covers themselves.

As indicated in the brief, one of the influential teachers at the school was Laszlo Moholy-Hagy, a painter from Hungary.  In reviewing his photograph Boats, Marseille, 1927 (as provided in the brief), the first impression is one of order.  The boats are  lined up along both diagonals, suggesting careful placement.  Yet, in the frame the placement is not symmetrical, nor do either diagonal lines lead the viewer to a point in the photograph.  The boats themselves are at first glance similar, but when looking closer, they are all unique.  The visual tension in the photograph comes from the need to understand what is going on in the frame.  The lines themselves are somewhat uncomfortable to glance at as they do not lead the eye.  The brief for this exercise refers to a rule in photography where lines must lead somewhere.  This rule in effect makes a photograph easier to look at, but doesn’t make it necessarily more interesting.  My own reaction to Boats, Marseille is one of ‘what is it?’, followed by ‘how clever’ followed by how visually striking it is.

My Abstract Lines

In shooting my abstract lines, I changed direction from the guidance in the brief.  One of my favourite forms of photography where unusual forms appear in seemingly mundane subjects is ‘macro’.  Instead of looking for distant subjects, I opted instead for very close up with my Nikon 200mm f/4 macro lens.

Review

Abstract 1

With the idea of ‘similar, but not identical’, I made this photograph by taping two pieces of 35mm film to my phone screen  The black and white film was overlaid on the colour and its sprocket holes deliberately mis-aligned to achieve the asymmetry.  The text along the edge helps explain what the subject is.   I like this photograph, because the viewer is looking along the off-horizontal lines that lead to the edges of the frame, but can quickly establish what the subject is by reading the text.

Abstract 2

When I was growing up, barcodes seemed new and hi-tech.  The lines in this frame lead nowhere and intersect the numerical code that runs vertically in the photograph.  Again, the eye has no direction around the photograph, and similarly while the subject is recognisable, what does the code mean?  I lit this with a green gel to convey the classical view of modern computing, the green displays of my childhood.

Abstract 3

I tested this photograph on my friends and colleagues.  Those old enough to be familiar with vinyl records instantly recognised it as an album track.  Interestingly, while the grooves lead nowhere, the colour fringes that were caused by the angle of the LED light to the lens and the surface resulted in a less uncomfortable image to look at.  I put this down to the softness of the light and interesting colours.  In comparison, when the image is converted to black & white, the image becomes harder on the eye as shown below.

 

Abstract 4

This shot of a rendered wall in Malvern was made in bright sunlight with a 50mm lens.  The lines of the plasterwork are both complimented and a contrasted with the shadow.  While I was trying to create the flat abstract effect, the shadow reveals the 3D nature of the wall.  In addition, the remains of the spider’s web in the centre distracts from the lines in the frame.  I like this photograph but it doesn’t demonstrate the effect that I was after.  However, this does highlight the subtlety of how light affects a composition.

Further Reading and Reflection

‘forces a concentration on the picture edge…and on the shapes that are created by it’.  

The section of The Photographer’s Eye [3] that this quote comes from ties together the challenge of frame that a photographer has over a classical painter.  The notion that photographers were driven to fill the frame with as much of the desired detail as possible for economic reasons, seems an old-fashioned principle in today’s digital age.  However, I can identify with that sentiment as someone who has re-discovered film photography.   If I were to create an analog print without an enlarger, the physical cropping and wasting of paper wouldn’t occur to me.  While I shoot film, my post process workflow is entirely digital, from scanning, to dust removal to printing.  In reality, I am still very much a digital photographer which has allowed me to be less mindful on where the edges of the frame are.   For this reason I will use the crop after the fact.  A good example in the previous exercise is the spider’s spinneret.  I wanted the subject in the frame with it’s web, understood that the relationship between them could be placed on the frame thirds, but was happy to shoot many and crop what worked.  I think that the combination of using a manually-focussed macro lens and the speed which which the spider was moving around, meant that this approach would yield a successful image and I am happy with how the photograph ended up…but I didn’t consider the rest of the composition.

In his book Taking My Time [4], Meyerowitz explains the virtue of being able to look beyond the frame for the anything that looks like it may form some relationship with your subject, surmising that our vision is so wide in all directions that if we concentrate entirely on the small viewfinder window of a camera, we could miss the greater narrative of a picture we think we understand.   He exalts the use of his rangefinder camera with the frame effectively being composed at one edge of the camera (as opposed to the central position of a conventional SLR).  By using both eyes, one to frame the photo and one to look past the camera at the scene, Meyerowitz describes looking for a magnetism between what’s in and currently out.   What is out, might just enter the frame and, better still change the meaning behind the photograph.  What I have learned from both books is to increase my awareness from the basic rules of photographic composition, which I believe I knew to some extent, to making better use of the frame.

References

[1] “Berenice Abbott’, Beetles & Huxley Catalogue, 2015

[2] “Dezeen’s Guide to Bauhaus Design”, Owen Hopkins,  Web Article https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/01/bauhaus-100-guide-architecture-design/, 2018

[3] “An Introduction – The Photographer’s Eye”, John Szarkowski, MoMA, 2007

[4] “Taking My Time”, Joel Meyerowitz, 2012

The Brief

Take three or four photographs in which a single point is placed in different parts of the frame.  When composing the shots use these three rules: the place of the point shouldn’t be too obvious (such as right in the middle); the composition should hold visual tension and be balanced (the golden section or rule of thirds) and the point should be easy to see.  Evaluate the shots according to these rules and select which one you think works best.

Then take a few more shots without any rules, just being aware of the relationship of the point to the frame.  Without the rules, how can you evaluate the shots?

Initial Thoughts and Research

When first looking at this exercise, I thought yes, I know about the rule of thirds. It was one of the first things I learned when I first picked up my digital camera in 2010 as a way of taking photographs that looked better than my previous ‘snaps’.  The concept of dividing the frame into a 3×3 grid and placing the subject on one of the intersections, made sense and certainly meant for a more appealing image than a subject dominating the centre of a frame.

What was perhaps not as obvious was the concept of holding tension in a photograph.  This is the approach of making the viewer see the elements that make up the image by leading them around the frame.  Sounds easy enough, but the viewer has the ability to conclude at a glance what the photograph is about, naturally gravitates to the sharpest object first, followed by anything that the brain instantly recognises.  A good example of the latter is when the sun or moon are recognisable in the frame; even if out of focus, we cannot help but look at them.  If a photograph is composed in such a way that the viewer can quickly assess and, in some cases dismiss the rest of the image, it doesn’t matter how good the photograph is technically.  However, if the image is ‘designed’ to grab the viewer’s attention, we have a stand out image.   We can achieve visual tension by utilising techniques such as the rule of thirds, but also leading lines, contrast, tone/colour etc.   A good example of visual tension can be seen below by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

When I look at this image, my eye is drawn to the end of the railing going into the frame as it is sharp. I then find myself drawing back to the steps and then following the curve of them down to the street where I find the subject of the photograph, the cyclist.  Although he is not in focus, the fact that he is slightly blurred gives the sense of movement. Bresson adopted a predatory style in approaching a photograph, in this case positioning himself at the top of the stairs, composing the static elements of the composition and waiting to ‘trap life’ when the cyclist appeared [2].

I’m fortunate enough to own an edition print of the photograph by Frank Habicht, from his series Permissive London, which hangs in my bedroom.  When thinking about visual tension, I looked at this picture again with the rule of thirds in mind.

When I look at this photograph, I’m obviously drawn to the two subjects, the nude girl and the horse and rider.  They are placed on the grid of thirds and loosely where the grid intersects.  The image is a humorous composition, with the horse looking at the girl while the seemingly stiff city gentleman on its back disapproves of her and her lack of clothes [3].  What interested me in viewing this image again though, was the surroundings.  The subjects are not particularly picked out from the background, so the photographer has included just enough detail to describe the setting the two subjects find themselves in, but not cluttering with the unnecessary.   In my research [1], I noted the jarring effect of placing the subject too close to the edge of the frame.  True, in this case we are directed to look at the subjects in the ‘thirds’, but the fairly sharp background elements achieve a balance that to me, prevents that uncomfortable view.  The building’s windows and the car are on the edge of the frame and the chained dog, close to.  However, they add to the visual setting and don’t distract from the main subjects.  I believe this is largely down to the visual impact of the contrasting subjects and their positions in the photograph, but the clever use of background in this case keeps the eye on the photograph, which creates the visual tension.  I prepared to explore the position of ‘other elements’ in my photographs of point subjects.

My Photographs

Evaluation

Photo 1

This image was trying to show the clash between the historical bridge and the discarded pizza box, despite the latter blending in to some extent with a colour matching the railings.  Placing the box in the lower left and the shadow from the ornate railing on the tarmac on the right, I think there is interest in the image.  I aimed to reduce the impact of the distant railing and signpost by shooting wide open at f2.8.  On reflection, I could keep the attention on the subjects by moving back and shooting a longer focal length to increase the bokeh and shorten the depth of the image.

Photo 2

The point that leapt out was the remains of the caution tape on a broken window.  The tape is apparently made redundant by the extent of the broken window.  I liked the contrast in colour to the rest of the brick wall.   The reflection of the building opposite in the window glass isn’t a problem, but may be a little distracting from the point itself.

Photo 3

The mug on the dashboard struck me as I passed the van.  I think the image creates a story as it’s clearly a workman’s van with messy dashboard and the house behind is for sale.  Is the van part of it?  Occupants moving in or out?   I put them on diagonally opposing thirds to use more of the frame.  What was a challenge with this image was exposure.  I used spot metering on the mug itself, which overexposed the highlights on the house.  I think the image works, though and as with Photo 1, I was drawn to the common colours in the image; white in this case.

Photo 4

This macro photograph of a spider in one of the trees in my garden is an example of creating an interesting composition using cropping.  The spider was very industrious and maintaining the focus on it was a challenge.  When I reviewed the images, I realised that I had a shot with the spider’s spinneret in sharp focus which was in the same plane as one of its legs, balancing on the web.  I placed the spinneret in the top right intersection of the thirds to create the interest.  The spider itself is on the edge of the frame, but as it’s out of focus there is no real distraction.   What I learned from editing this ‘accidental’ shot was that a square crop can create an image that maximises the use of the space in the frame when the rule of thirds is applied.  The original to this photograph had space to the left of the web that was wasted.  I’m really happy with how this turned out.

Breaking the Rules

The second part of the exercise was to shoot without rules, but being aware of the relationships between the point and the rest of the frame.  I shot the following photographs:

Review – How I evaluate them

Photo 5

I positioned the sign near the lower edge of the frame and waited for some customers to come out.  With a low shutter speed of 1/13th at f8 (camera braced against the wall), I managed to get movement in the people.  While not obeying the rule of thirds, I think this image is still balanced as the alleyway to the shop and it’s straight, brightly coloured roof provide a frame to the photograph.  The sign itself is angled away from the camera toward the people coming out of the doorway, so making best use of the space within the frame.  The light from the uncovered part of the alleyway in front of the shop highlights the secondary subject, while the sign has sufficient contrast to stand out while in shadow.

Photo 6

The in this photo appears to be huge in the frame, but the point of focus is the logo on the side of the mug.  I’ve tried to balance the rest of the image with enough detail to show that it is a table in a cafe, but with sufficient separation of the subject from the background using aperture of f8.  For me it works technically, but on a creative level the dominance mug is distracting and masks detail like the coffee stains on it’s surface and the crumbs on the table.   In retrospect, a less bold tone for the mug may have worked better in this composition as long as there was still enough contrast with the logo to bring out the ‘point’

Photo 7

The position of the point in this image is a little confusing as it the balloon face is surrounded by other balloons and the sign it’s mounted on.  It is balanced by the chapel building behind while maintaining the contrast between church and halloween, but it subconsciously obeys the rule of thirds.  In evaluating it, the image jars slightly by having the subject at the edge of the frame, but is offset by the other details.  I shot another of the same subject lower in the frame and it instantly became visually difficult.

Photo 8

I shot this picture to deliberately clash two composition rules, just to see the effect.  As well as the rule of thirds, which the point does not fit within, I composed with the rule of symmetry in mind.  The image instantly has a problem because the symmetry of the railings is clear and the sign is in the centre.  Coupled with it being close to the top of the frame, this image is visually difficult.

Conclusions

My main conclusion from this exercise is that while technically it is good to have rules to follow to get a ‘nice’ photograph, creatively it is more important to place the subject or point in a balanced frame.  As long as there is some form of relationship between the subject and the other elements in the photo, the rules can be broken effectively.  Placing subjects without visual tension too close to the frame or amongst clutter doesn’t work as well as drawing out the relationship and using the background to enhance the picture’s context as in Bare Essentials.  When reflecting on my own photographs here, the first four were easy, where the second four took more effort in trying to make work creatively, with very mixed results.

I also learned that even if the in-camera composition doesn’t work, a good crop can bring a photograph into balance.  With Photo 4, my uncooperative subject and relative inexperience with a macro lens meant that cropping was the only way to achieve the image that I wanted; I’m happy with how that photograph looks.

References

[1] Photography Composition- Creating Visual Tension with 2 Subjects, Joshua Cripps, 2015, Youtube media, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-G3Yrupg0Y

[2]  Henri Cartier-Bresson Most Important Art, Analysis piece, TheArtStory.org, https://www.theartstory.org/artist-cartier-bresson-henri-artworks.htm

[3] Frank Habicht Bio, Huxley Parlour Gallery website, https://huxleyparlour.com/artists/frank-habicht/