Part two of the course relates to Design. It is a concept that I have to admit I had little knowledge about, but after reading the study material and doing some further research I looked at some previous images that I had taken to see if I had been capturing a point without knowing the exact name for it.
One particular photographer that I have been reading about , Peter Ensenberger, from the USA made some interesting comments about Points, design and rules.
“Faithfully following all the “rules” of composition will not necessarily culminate in a good photograph. The rules are intended more as guidelines than strict dogma, but they will help you design well-balanced images that are pleasing to the eye.”
I thought that this was a very interesting point of view and a made me feel slightly less worried about some of the images that I have taken. This together with good comments from my tutor and with good scores from judges, in relation to some of the images that I have taken, gives me a certain amount of confidence.
Mr Ensenberger also makes a further comment that a “photograph can successfully tell only one story.” This was great advice and it reminded me that I should not “clutter” up my images with items that distract the viewer.
Exercise Positioning a Point
This exercise was described as straightforward, you had to place an object in a single point in the frame.
For an object to qualify as a point it has to be ‘small in the frame and contrast with its surroundings.
I looked at some of the images that I had taken and although they were single points in the frame they did not, in my view, qualify as a point.
The following did not qualify.
Well, why do I think that the above images, although I think they are good images, did not meet the standard to be a point. In my view it’s because the main point of interest ( The building and the two stone faces) are just too big.
I decided to take a trip back to the South Coast. I was asked to take a number of images and in each one position the point in a different place.
The background has to be plain and even so I decided to use the clear blue sky.
Here are the images that I have chosen.
(It would have been better if the sky behind the first two images had a little more detail, but this is what I had in front of the lens!)
Looking at each image
After reading where the points should be I tried to place the moon to the left, the right and then higher or lower in the frame. It did just not look good. So , I just placed it right in the centre of the frame. I think that I should also have zoomed in closer to the moon to get greater detail.
I took this image of the helicopter and I knew that it had to be on the right of the image. A rule that I had previously been taught that a model should look into a space made me think , should the aircraft also fly into the space?.
The helicopter is next to the edge of the frame so it looks bigger, I also cropped the image a little to make the helicopter stand out.
The person on the ropes was swinging up and down at quite a fast speed. I wanted to see if I could get this over to the person who was looking at the image. The first shots I took was with the girl going up in the air. I placed her at the bottom of the shot but I did not like the result. There was not enough movement in the image.
I waited for the girl to come down and realised that the best place to see movement was in her hair, as you can see. But this was not noticeable when she went up. Placing her at the top of the frame going in a downward motion I wanted to have space for her to fall into. I liked the finished result and this image gives a good example of movement.
I enjoyed this exercise but if I get time I may have a look at it again to see if I can capture a further set of images with a different background.