Bucketlist

I was traveling by car around the afternoon when I noticed some high-rise buildings scattered along the way. Looking out the window, I was reminded of the I Spy road trip game and decided to take some photos from inside the car.

To compose the image, I applied the Rule of Thirds by positioning the building along the left vertical gridline. I also chose a tall crop to emphasize the height of the subject.

Many patterns can be found in nature, and thankfully, my area has plenty of it. This photo shows the veins of a leaf, which I captured using my phone's macro mode to highlight its fine details. By using this mode, however, I wasn't able to manipulate the ISO and shutter speed settings. Fortunately, it was bright enough outside for me to get a well-lit shot without needing to adjust any manual settings.

When I think of night, I think of the moon. I took this photo near my area, applying the Rule of Thirds by placing the moon along the intersection of the left vertical gridline and top horizontal gridline. This also helped balance the composition, with the silhouette of a telephone line at the bottom. I set the ISO to 1600—high enough to brighten the image but not so high that it would become too grainy. I also used a relatively slow shutter speed to compensate for the low light conditions.

I visited a hardware store that had many fake flowers on display, so I took the opportunity to snap some photos. The flowers looked a bit busy, so I chose to focus on the flower in the front. It was the most visually appealing and easy to recognize. Unlike the other flowers, it was mostly opened and facing forward. To help draw attention to it, I applied the Rule of Thirds by placing it along the left vertical and bottom horizontal gridlines. The lighting wasn’t very bright, so I set the ISO to 800 and the shutter speed to 1/180s.

Similar to the first photo, I also took this one while I was traveling by car. I wanted to create the feeling of movement through capturing the bright light trails left behind by passing vehicles. I set my ISO to 1600 to compensate for the low light conditions and the shutter speed to 1 second to allow enough time for the lights to leave trails in the frame. I also applied the Rule of Thirds by cropping the photo so that the white trail in the middle aligned with the bottom horizontal gridline, while the faint outlines of the buildings rested along the top horizontal gridline.