Links: Flickr
Moving on
from delving into past photos; I set out on my mission of finding new
contrasting pairs. I thought I’d start by going for a walk round the outskirts
of our village, hoping that nature would throw out a few ideas.
1.
My husband found this spiky plant which I
thought would be perfect for ‘many’ and I knew just the thing to look out for
to contrast. As we got back towards the houses, I found a Holly bush in a
garden. The ‘few’ spikes were perfect to make up my first pair. I took both
photos when I got home, using our cat’s kennel roof as a backdrop. I think the
similar set up draws more attention to the differences in the plants.
2. My next two shots taken on the same walk had also been in mind for ‘many/few’ but as I couldn’t choose between these and the previous pair, I had to think outside the box a bit. The photos had been taken using my husband’s black t-shirt as a backdrop so with the dandelion clocks being white; I decided to use these as‘black/white’ instead. In order to emphasise the contrast, I extended the‘black’ shot by adding more black background in Photoshop and for the ‘white’ I used a tight crop, enabling the clock to almost fill the frame. I feel that the black photo has a sad, lonely quality to it for a few reasons; the dark background, the dandelion standing alone in such a wide space and also the lack of spores showing closeness to the end of its life. The white photo, in contrast looks very bright and vibrant and the fact that it fills the frame makes it look much bigger and bolder than it is in reality.
3.
The shot I took for ‘diagonal’ came about while
sitting in the back garden with a coffee. As I sat back and looked up at the
parasol, I noticed that it was a web of diagonal lines. In contrast to diagonal
I took a shot of the ‘rounded’ roof of the Bagel Nash in our local shopping
centre. I spotted the oval roof along with the round signs from the floor above,
also whilst drinking coffee and it seemed perfect to make up my pair.
4.
My idea for the ‘large/small’ pair came about as
I was lying on the ground after completing the ‘fixed aperture’ exercise
earlier in the course. I was taking shots of the cooling tower, the grass and
my bag, varying which I focused on when my daughter got in the way. I liked the
idea but as the focus was wrong in the original, we went back for a re-shoot in
order to submit for this assessment. The reason I have used this for ‘big’ is
that my daughter looks like a giant in comparison to the cooling tower. I intended to use a similar technique for small by setting a person far behind an object. On holiday though, we stumbled upon a plant which looked like giant rhubarb so I thought I'd use the plant to make my son appear small. On editing the photo, I was disappointed with the success of the effect; however when I put the photo on Facebook, a few friends said that he looked like a Borrower so I decided to use it after all.
5.
Yet again, my daughter helped with the idea for
‘high/low’. My original plan on going to this wood was to get a shot of the
children up a tree. When she started jumping over a dip in the ground, I
grabbed the opportunity and lay in the dip, shooting her jumping over me. My
contrasting ‘low’ shot opportunity came about on spotting this tortoise at a
wildlife park on holiday. Yet again, I needed to be on the floor but this time,
I was shooting along the ground. I feel that the feet and the wide crop
emphasise the low down nature of the shot.
6.
Whilst at the Wildlife Park, we had the pleasure
of watching the otters being fed. The speed of their fight to get the chicks
was quite fascinating. Even at a shutter speed of 1/80, a good deal of motion
blur is shown. I felt that this classic stance of the meerkat, taken a few
moments later was an ideal contrast to the motion of the otters, so it was
chosen to complete my example of ‘moving/still’.
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For the ‘hard/soft’ combination, I chose to
photograph my pet snails as their hard shells and soft bodies were ideal for
the project. I boosted the contrast on the shell shot in order to make it look
harder and used a soft focus filter on the front view to emphasise the
softness.
7. I got‘continuous’ ticked off while my family were skimming stones on a lochan. As usual, once they were in one spot entertaining themselves, I grabbed the chance to have a good look around rather than snapping things as we passed. It was as I picked my camera up from this bench that I realised it was made of long, continuous planks of wood. My shot for 'intermittent was the last taken for this assignment. It's surprising how difficult it is to find a long straight road which you're actually allowed to stop on but I found this lay by close to my home. I included the car in the shot for interest but waited until it was in the distance so as not to detract attention from the intermittent white lines.
9.
My final shot, taken from the coffee shop in our
local shopping centre was originally taken for ‘curved’ because of the sweeping
curve of the roof but as I started to edit it, I realised that the straight lines
were just as dominant in the shot as the curves. The shot is a HDR combination
of five exposures, blended in Photomatix in order to bring out the detail of
the ironwork in the roof. I desaturated all but the blues and cyans in order to
enhance the hanging posters as I felt that the vertical lines grounded the
shot.
