Project 2: Exercise 1.2: Point

1. Take two or three photographs in which a single point is placed in different parts of the frame. (A ‘point’ should be small in relationship to the frame; if it’s too large it becomes a shape.)

How can you evaluate the pictures? How do you know whether you’ve got it right or not? Is there a right place and a wrong place for the point? For the sake of argument, let’s say that the right place shouldn’t be too obvious and that the point should be clear and easy to see. As there’s now a ‘logic’ to it, you can evaluate your composition according to the logic of the point. As you look at the pictures you might find that you’re also evaluating the position of the point by its relationship to the frame.

There is no right or wrong answer here wherever the point is placed within the frame the eye does not stray outside the frame. The first two photos tend to keep the eye loitering in the middle of the frame and not towards the edges but in the third photo due to the point being placed close to the edge your eye  flows over the whole frame looking for more. All the images seem to balance no matter were the point is placed in the frame.

 

 

 

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

2. Take a number of images in which a point is placed in relationship to the frame. Can you find any place where the point is not in relationship to the frame? If it’s in relationship to the frame you can place a point in any part of the picture and the picture is balanced. 

As I took the photos and moved the point around the frame I realised no matter where the point was situated it never really felt out of balance, the closer the point came to to the centre the boring the photo became. The point could never be placed anywhere within the frame and be claimed not in a relationship with the frame. The point has to appear in the frame to have a relationship otherwise the point is no longer part of the image. At what point does the point become to large and take on the form of the subject?

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

Image 7

Print out two or three of your point photographs and trace the route your eye takes over the surface with a pencil. Then try the same with a selection of photographs from newspapers or magazines. You should notice that each photograph seems to have its own tempo. Add the traced photographs to your learning log together with brief observations.

Image 8

Image 9

Image 10

With my own photo (image 8) I noticed my eye tends to circle the whole outer frame and not the middle but with the adverts (image 9 & 10) the eye crisscrossed through the centre.

Reference

Illustration: Image 9 Diver April 2017 back page [Accessed Sept 2017]

lllustration: Image 10 Mens Fitness June 2015 page 7 [Accessed Sept 2017]

Project 1: Exercise 1.1: The Instrument

Take three or four exposures of the same scene. Don’t change anything on the camera and keep the framing the same.

Preview the shots on the LCD screen. At first glance they look the same, but are they? Perhaps a leaf moved with the wind, the light changed subtly, or the framing changed almost imperceptibly to include one seemingly insignificant object and exclude another. Time flows, the moment of each frame is different, and, as the saying has it, ‘you can’t step into the same river twice’.

Now bring up the histogram on the preview screen. The histogram is a graphical representation of exposure – the camera’s sensitivity to light. As you page through the images you can see small variations in the histograms. Even though the pictures look the same, the histogram data shows that in a matter of seconds the world changes, and these subtle differences are recorded by the camera. If you refine the test conditions – shooting on a tripod to fix the framing, moving indoors and closing the curtains to exclude daylight – still the histogram changes. Probably some of the changes are within the camera mechanism itself; still, the camera is a sensitive enough instrument to record them.

Add the sequence to your learning log with the time info from your camera’s shooting data as your first images for Part One.

Image 1 taken 09:03:12

Image 2 taken 09:03:15

Image 3 taken 09:03:18

Image 4 taken 09:03:20

The photos where all taken within a 3 second sequence of each other using a Nikon D5600. All on fully automatic with a 20mm focal length, ISO560, f4 aperture and 1/60th shutter speed, I never used a tripod but instead rested on the back of a chair to keep the images in frame.

Even with all the settings set the same and the frame almost identical in each photo the histogram still shows subtle variations in each individual picture.

As the test suggests what changes take place in such a short period of time, the variables are probably countless i.e. light shift, button depress, focal points. With today’s sensors no 2 photos can ever be taken with the same camera and produce identical histograms.