Shiny surfaces


Without something to diffuse the light its reflection is very harsh. The above image is of the diffuse withlight from above. I like this one the most out of the series of images for several reasons. The scissors are well defined, with no harsh reflections, they are clearly separated from the background. The position of the light nicely highlights the outline of the scissors as well as enhancing the overall symmetry by placing the midlight down the centre of the handles.


Another image that I found nice was using a coloured diffuser for the lamp, in this case a peach coloured lampshade. I like the contrast with the orange blade and body of the scissors, and it references a metallic shade in drawing (blue/orange gradients).

Also on a side note I found it difficult to get a good tripod positioning for this shot, in the end I hung the camera underneath the tripod using a gorilla pod.

Concentrating light
See also flickr


The main thing I got for this exercise was learning this technique as a way to completely separate subject from background. I wouldn't have thought this would be so dramatic even with an increased ability to focus the flash only on part of the scene. There is some slight darkening around the edges of the subject, but this isn't necessarily too pronounced and can be of benefit to additionally draw attention to part of the image (in these the child).

Contrast and shadow fill

The lighting angle

Icons across the top indicate position of the flash around a horizonal axis (front, side, behind and to the side, behind). Icons across the side indicate the position of the flash along a vertical axis (same level, 45o, above)

Softening the light

Outdoors at night (flickr)

Fluorescent lighting

Auto white-balancing the light to outside, and then taking a photo inside gave the appearance of a warmer scene. Conversely, balancing the light inside (fluorescent) and then applying those settings to outside gave a cooler scene.
My compact camera is limited inside, using an ISO of 100, anything over than a few feet away drops under 1/60, what I could consider reliable for a standard hand-held shot. IS can help, in which case 1/20 is acceptable, and occasionally I can get an okay shot from 1/4 seconds.

Cloudy weather and rain, see also flickr


Shooting in cloudy weather with day time balance gave a cooler image. Shifting the white balance to a hotter setting, or selecting cloud returned this to normal. Interestingly though it does convey some mood, especially with rain, that this isn't a 'warm' sunny day, a little bit of coolness may not be a bad thing.

Variety with low sun
See also flickr

A punting trip in Cambridge gave me a good opportunity to explore lighting with low sun. One of the things that this brought to my attention is how the sun washes out colour in the images. There will obviously be the risk of overexposure when shooting in the sun, and the loss of information that this results in. I think that what I am perceiving as 'washed out' is the shift and compression of tonal range to the upper end of the scale. The colour therefore loses 'depth', even if there isn't loss of information from overexposure.

I know my own preference is for slightly underexposed images for the 'feel' that this gives to the images. One of the things that I also had to consider at this time was the amount of light, I was using my compact camera, and had to increase the ISO for most of the later images I took on the trip. It was fine to shoot in direct sun, or in diffuse sun when covered by clouds, but in the shade, there was not enough light without using a low power flash or increasing the ISO.

Out of a set of images with the sun behind or to the side of the subject, back lighting was my favourite. The slight halo around the subject makes them 'pop' out of the image. Because the light from the sun was somewhat reduced by the trees behind the subject, there was perhaps less difficult in getting the right exposure. Another option with this kind of photo would have been to expose to avoid overexposure of the background and then to add some light back towards the subject with a reflector, or a weak flash.

I'm not sure where I lie on the rim lighting in this scene. As a final image I would have cropped this from the right, to remove the glare. In comparison to the backlit image, the rim-lighting on one side contributes to the subject popping out of the frame in a similar way. The contrast between one lit and one not lit side gives a bit of movement to the picture. Also because of the difference in lighting position the exposure is easier. Finally there is some extra detail on the subject due to the slight side lighting. I would have thought the shadow on the fact would be more pronounced than in this image, and was surprised by how this was not the case, with it being slightly softer than the side-lit or front-lit photo.

Juxtaposition

Here we have a photo of my friend climbing. I choose this viewpoint and focal lengths for two reasons. We have no sense of height here, we are on a similar horizontal plane to the subject, to the image portrays the action of climbing without any reference to height, soemthing I found interesting. The focal length (24mm) also adds depth to the picture, which would otherwisebe missing because of this placement. We have some sense of texture to the wall, and also contributes to the subject 'popping' off the wall, along with the difference in colour.

Evidence of action

For this image I make the object slightly abstract, it is not immediately apparent what has happened until we assemble the object into a class. This would have been made a lot easier if we had the whole of the glass as a cylindrical object, and particually relies on the viewer being familiar with a broken glass looks like. However the image doesn't really contribute to a story. If I had included liquid in the glass this would have improved the image in two ways, for a start we would be able to identify the object as a glass, secondly we would have the idea of a story, that a glass was in use and had somehow been knocked over. From the pattern of the broken glass we could even confer that the glass had been knocked down toward the left of the camera.

Rain

I chose this image to convey how rain changes our view of the world, or how it transforms what we see. I had started taking images like these in a prior exercise taking photos of the effects of rain. I like this image because the leaves on the ground add an interesting touch to the picture, particularly as the actual leaves of the tree are obscured. To have the viewer first approach this as a tree, and then see it as a reflection in a puddle I have flipped the view vertically so that it is the right way up.
Had there been actual rain at the time, it would have been nice to have some texture to the puddle to show this, but then the reflection of the tree would have been disrupted and the illusion lost, so it may have detracted from the photo.

Symbols

Growth:
- Plants, showing greenery, thick vines might be good if portrayed vertically, to give the idea of something increasing
- A series of something increasing, might be difficult to show, could be done with numbers of people, an arranged set of cars, small still life objects
Excess:
- A large meal, specifically an amount of food excessive for one person, multiple sides, multiple desserts
- Overflowing, a container with too many objects, some have overflowed onto the floor, e.g. apples in a box
Crime:
- Action could be portrayed indirectly, by broken glass, particularly if valuables (e.g. jewellery shop)
- Instruments of crime, crowbar and balaclava etc, could be extended to metaphors, e.g. tie and briefcase for social commentary
Silence:
- Meditation, a figure meditating, would be helped by showing an anonymous figure, silhouette, maybe meditating surrounded by motion blur of people
- Something which is normally noisy would make a good contrast, e.g. a group of school children sitting down still, silence could be emphasised by fingers on lips
Poverty:
- Obvious example is people in a situation of poverty, could be made interesting by focussing on certain components, a contrast in the buskers cap, poverty indicated by money?
- A still life of a 'meal', cardboard as plate, crumbs of bread as meal representing extreme poverty

Light throughout the day.


I found that this exercise took a lot longer to get all the images that I thought it would. Despite being a good time of year for the photos (June-July), there were very few days with consistent sun. Even with choosing work as the location for the images, allowing me to capture a time if the light was suitable it still took me a few weeks to get all the images.

I wanted to convey more information across the scene, so I chose to take a 360 panorama at each timepoint, allowing me to see the effect of lighting across the day in different parts of the scene.

The most dramatic effects were before and afternoon, where the sunlight was at an angle. The shadows were lengthened in these images, having a much more dramatic impact. I particularly like the way the shadows of the tree in the first image amplify the diagonal of the path. With the sun facing the other way, there is a diagonal shadow case across the middle building which harms the overall image, although the lens flare is an interesting effect.
The central tree I think works best under these long shadow conditions because there is a lot more depth to the foliage in these images. Conversely I think the building benfits more around the middle of the day when the light is not 'bleaching' the shadow directly, or putting the whole face of the building into shadow, but rather is more just making the details of the building a bit more noticeable.

The overall scene later on in the last images is a lot more homogenous as there is no obvious shadow. The only probablem with this image is that there is very little depth to the scene. Although there is enough shape to the building to still pick out details it still looks very flat overall.

Judging colour temperature 2
See also flickr




I'm not sure which of the white balances I prefer for the different images. I guess it would depend on what I want to convey, or rather what impression I want to give of a space. Choosing white balance for shade gave an image that was 'warmer', whereas auto and sunlight tended to give a cooler scene. With the garden this set up an interesting contrast as an enclosed area, from a nice warm place to a neutral plain place. The same effect was seen with the corner of pavement. It's a sort of invalid portrayal as a cool empty portrayal is more contextually accurate, having the scene slightly cooler than auto feeds into this for an interesting effect.

Judging colour temperature 1

With the changes in temperature of the lighting the following changes in colour (using daylight setting) were observed
Sunlight - Image appeared to be correctly colour
Shade - cooler tone, more blue
Evening sunlight - warmer tones, more orange

The two best ways to deal with white balance are using a grey card at the beginning of a set to a) set the white balance, or b) use for later editing. If possible shooting in raw gives complete freedom to adjust settings later without loss of information, although I haven't noticed any visible effects of slight correction on a computer when shooting in JPG. If I am concerned about the colour of a shot, I will normal custom white balance my camera to a neutral part of the image prior to shooting a desired scene.

Higher and lower ISO

For this exercise I was interested to explore a role for higher ISO aside from a need to capture an image. I have always tried to shoot with lower ISO precisely to avoid noise, one of the reasons I place an importance on image stabilisation, especially in a compact camera where you a bit more constrained with what you can work with. Typically I will only increase the ISO when I really need to, e.g. on a cloudy/rainy day if I don't have the luxury of simply increasing exposure time, e.g. moving subjects, going over the limit of what I can capture without a tripod. I normally set my camera to low ISO rather than automatic and try to shoot to this, increasing the ISO if necessary to capture an image. If I need to capture a moment and don't have time for this, I can switch to automatic to quickly adjust setting including ISO.
In the end it is important to actually capture an image, so sometimes a higher ISO is a necessity, particularly with compact cameras.

With my 5D I have found that ISO isn't so much of a problem anymore, the camera can handle higher ISOs than my other ones, without any obvious noise. I also have a wide 50mm lens for situations in which I may need more light, e.g. night/indoors.


This image was taken with an ISO of 3200, beyond the range that I would normally consider for my 5D. I found the stylised effect this produced interesting and an appealing photo when enlarged. I think this is due to the effect on texture that the noise introduces which I find myself noticing rather than simply thinking of the noise in the image. This might work precisely because of the different texture and how these work with the noise. You have glass, metal, paper, plaster of the wall, and a blurred background. In addition the glass is broken into two by the line of the wall, further contributing to this division of texture. I think the overall effect is a very subtle introduction of noise, and this subtlety makes it interesting.

Measuring exposure

I have a slight bias towards taking photos which are darker than average. I like the gritty and dark mood created in underexposed photographs as well as the way this draws the viewer in.


I think this works particularly well in images which contain crisp shadow, you get nice solid dark lines defined in the image which aren't as disruptive as if they were present in an underexposed image where the rest of the photo was lighter. Also lowering the exposure can be useful to make shadow a critical defining aspect to a subject, such as in this image of a car, where the shadows on the car become a defining part of this image as well as making a nice framing with the gutter next to the car.

Especially with the rest of the scene being out of focus, increasing the exposure for this image to attention away from the car and weakened the overall composure.


The image of the church was interesting, you get a very stylised effect with underexposure, and a strong presentation of the shape of the building with the outline almost seeming inked in. I think that higher exposure did not work quite so well because you lose some of the constrast with the light background which contributes to this.


The image of the items on the shelf is very light and soft, both in focus and in the colours contained. To continue this I think that a higher exposure works better, keeping a very neutral image with little shadow contrast.

There is also the consideration of detail that exposure gives to an image. If you are photographing to include detail, the exposure must be suitable for this. For images with a large dynamic range there may be sacrifice between areas of high and low exposure and the overall exposure then reflects the area in which you want to keep detail (underexposing if you want to recover detail in highlights, overexposing to recover detail in shadow).

Colours into tones


Yellow filter    green filter    blue filter
The red flowers were not quite red, they were yellow-orange for filter purposes. They were lightened by the yellow filter and darkened by the blue filter. The blue filter which darkened the flowers made them the definitive point of focus for the image, however there was loss of information in the shadows of the flowers lending to a heavily stylised look.
I found a lesser application of the blue filter and a darkening of the green channel to be the most pleasing combination overall, darkening the flowers without losing too much detail, and retaining some detail in the stems.
Use of filters provides an easy way to alter objects with a main colour in a scene and is particularly useful when this occurs, e.g. nature photography to darken/lighten grass, landscape photography to darken/lighten sky.

Colour relationships

Red: green l:l        Orange: blue 1:2        Yellow: violet l:3


Other combinations

The colours in these combinations all come from one side of he colour wheel, green-yellow-orange-red, rather than opposite complementary colours.
They all also have neutral areas of the image which serve to increase (flowers, soft toy) or decrease (food) intensity.
The presence of colour in an otherwise neutral image strongly throws the image off balance. In the flowers, they are aligned along a diagonal and almost centered for balance. In the food the green and orange balance each other, with both slightly off centre. The intervening neutral space softens the relationship between them and helps balance the brightness of the orange. With the soft toy the red clearly sets up a frame to the image, the presence of some green throws of the balance as a complementary opposite and more strongly frames the soft toy in the bottom right.

Primary and secondary colours, see also flickr

Primary: red, yellow, blue




Secondary (complementary opposites): green, violet, orange

Strength of a colour, varying exposure with aperture

For this exercise I photographed a plastic bag. I didn't use 1/2 stop increments on my camera, but rather 1/3 stops, changing the aperture.

Close to camera metered exposure there was little change in hue or saturation but a decrease in value of colour. In more underexposed images there was a slight change in hue due to a fall in green to red (RGB). There was a further decrease in value of the colour with no overall change in saturation.

This exercise was interesting as I had not actively noticed how colour changes with change in exposure, and specifically how the qualities change in relation to each other.

Real and implied triangles

Real triangles:

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Implied triangles:


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Rhythm and pattern, see also flickr

For images with rhythm and pattern there must be repeating unitsn which may take many forms. Two types of pattern are regular and irregular, with regular patterns repeating in a predictable way and irregular patterns repeating apparently randomly, though this may be subject to framing.

Diagonal lines, see flickr

For this exercise I used a mixture of objects producing diagonals, diagonals created by perspective and diagonals created from the rotation of horizontal or vertical lines.

For diagonal lines produced by shape, there may be a requirement for horizontal or vertical lines to act as a reference against which the diagonal can be perceived. With stairs, they are orientated on a horizontal plane, and the stairs themselves contain horizontal/vertical steps.

The iron detail on the hinges of the door are orientated by the vertical panelling of the door, take away or flip this reference and the picture becomes a different object and the focus shifts to the (now) horizontal lines.

Diagonals also give a clear depth to an image with perspective lines directly contributing to an illusion of depth.

Horizontal and vertical lines, see flickr

One of the things I noticed from this exercise was the different ways to produce and highlight lines.

For a start the rest of the composition can be complementary, neutral or detrimental to conveying a primary line. A background with lines in a similar direction can reinforce a primary line, such as the dual line of the building and lampost. A neutral background may have no effect on the perception of the line, or it may in fact detract from a primary line. An interesting example of the latter is in the case of images with both horizontal and vertical lines where the balance of these contributes to the perception of horizontal or vertical.

I think the most effective example of a line is the horizontal line formed at the interfact between grass and gravel. This is especially effective because of the multiple contrasts present in the composition. The grass is soft and brightly coloured, the gravel is hard and mutely coloured. There is not a definite object in this image that give the line, but rather the interface forms this line.