Assignment One: Contrasts

This first assignment was to build on the learning and experiences from Part One: The Frame and explore more deeply one of the fundamental principles in design which was contrast.


The activity involved the taking and choice of eight pairs of photographs from a list with the concept of contrast in mind for which, ultimately, I ended up with the following pairings:

• Transparent/Opaque

• Diagonal/Rounded

• Pointed/Blunt

• Light/Dark

• Smooth/Rough

• Light/Heavy

• Still/Moving

• Straight/Curved

plus a further photograph which I felt demonstrated contrast in one picture.

Initially, the choice of pairs was a result of some thinking and planning beforehand but once I had started the assignment, other ideas came to light and I was happy to swap to what I felt were better, more meaningful, contrasts as a result.

As a result, in some cases the photographs were ‘contrived’ – in other words, I set them up with a view to showing the extreme of the contrast – whilst others were as a result of observations that I had made which I felt would work better in the assignment. In only one case (Moving), did I use a photograph already taken and used elsewhere ie for the Movement project in this Part of the course but which I thought was very suitable for what I wanted to show.

One of my observations – and a key learning – from the assignment is the fact that I have noticed that I am starting to look at potential subjects more closely with an interest on how this will look when photographed. Whilst saying that I am starting to ‘see the world in a different way’ sounds a bit like a cliché, I do think this is true and see this already as a benefit of the course.

The photographs for this assignment can be found on my Flikr site.

The following sets out my thinking behind each contrast pair:

Transparent/Opaque: I chose to use glass in our home for this pair of photographs. Our homes have so much glass in and around them and this seemed the perfect material to demonstrate this pair of contrasts. We have chosen recently to install glass internal doors on our ground floor in order to allow more light into our hallway and rooms and the Transparent photograph shows one of these doors with my daughter being the subject to bring to life the contrast. I also chose this particular door as the window that I subsequently used to show Opaque is reflected in the glass. I again used Esther to highlight this contrast asking her to come up close to the opaque window so that you could see her shape and be able to identify her in some way.

Diagonal/Rounded: My original intention was to use scaffolding as a subject for Diagonal highlighting the cross bars that are often used to make the structure more stable and then a rounded building (an old gardener’s hut) which was of round construction. However, I subsequently noticed that there were considerable diagonal struts under Eastbourne’s pier and took a number of photographs to show these. The photograph I chose highlights these to an extreme. The pier also has a large hall on it which has a large domed feature coupled with some smaller roundels; these can be seen from a distance away and is a particular landmark for Eastbourne’s seafront. In taking this pair, I was again able to connect the Diagonal contrast photograph with the Rounded photograph using different parts of the pier’s structure.

Pointed/Blunt: These two photographs were set up at home to show the contrasts. In both cases, I wanted to use cutting instruments to connect them together. For the Pointed picture, I hung a pair of pointed silver scissors with very pointed tips in front of a black screen and then took a number of photographs. The final picture was cropped to highlight the scissors on the right hand side. The second photograph of the pair, Blunt, was created by using the back of a table knife to hack through a ripe tomato. The first few photographs looked a little ‘dry’ so I added some pips from another tomato to try and enhance the contrast.

Light/Dark: These are my favourite pair of contrast photographs. For Light, I wanted to show the source of all natural light but simply pointing my camera at the sun was, in my view, a bit boring so I used some trees to show the sun’s light coming through. I noticed that by changing the aperture on the lens that the light gave a circular border which accentuated the light coming through. To show Dark, I perversely needed something to highlight the dark and so lit a candle in a darkened room. This was very simple to do but effectively demonstrated the contrast.

Smooth/Rough: I took these two photographs on an especially calm and warm September’s day on Eastbourne’s beach. The sea was incredibly calm with the ‘waves’, if that is what you would call them, barely washing onto the shore. It is quite unusual for the sea to be this calm and I thought it would make a good representation of Smooth. By contrast, Eastbourne does not have sandy beaches but instead are covered in shingle. I liked the contrast of the smooth sea with the roughness of the pebbles all the way down to the water line.

Light/Heavy: The contrast I used for Light was a feather. Initially, I wanted to show the feather floating down in front of a black screen but this proved extremely difficult to do particularly with the lighting. Eventually, I managed to get this rather grainy photograph by dropping the feather and photographing it from above as it descended to the table below (which was also covered in a black cloth). For Heavy, I used our kitchen scales with three house bricks balanced on one side. One consideration was to put a tiny weight on the other side but in the end, I chose not to do this with, instead, leaving that side of the scales empty.

Still/Moving: I enjoyed the project on panning and particularly liked the photographs of motorbikes which seemed to work really well for me. As I knew at that time that I would also be looking for photographs for this assignment, I chose to use one of the panned motorbike photographs to show Moving. This photograph clearly shows the movement through the horizontal lines in the background. For Still, I set about looking for a stationary motorbike parked in the town and found this particular one.

Straight/Curved: I am fortunate enough to live in an area where there are a number of woodland paths and walks as well as open gardens. It was relatively simple to photograph these two pictures both on a sunny day and showing these two contrasts. For Straight, I think this contrast is accentuated by the shadow lines that run across the path giving an almost ‘train track’ impression. In doing so, this leads the eye to the end of the path. For Curved. I used a woodland path which bent round to the right. I liked this curve as it invites the viewer to see what is around the corner.

The final photograph attempts to show contrast in one picture and was taken from the south bank of the Thames by Westminster Bridge looking across the water back towards the Houses of Parliament. There are a number of contrasts in the photograph including light and dark (the sun shining on the left hand side of the picture and the dark shadows under the bridge); sharp and blurred (the bridge in the foreground is very sharp whilst the Parliament buildings have a softness to them caused by the depth of field); movement in the water as it ripples under the bridge; weather, both good and bad with fine blue sky on the left and rain clouds on the right; reflection of light on the water; and, nature and man (water and the bridge).

September 2010

Photography 1 - A Week In Cornwall

I've spent a serious part of my week off in Cornwall catching up with the first main unit of the course where I knew there would be plenty of photography opportunities - as there have been. I read through the unit before I came away in order to give myself as chance to think through what might be required as well as look for new places where I could take some photographs.

This is likely to be a long learning log this week as there is plenty to write about as well as show - of course, most of the photographs will be on my Flikr account.

The subject of the unit has been around the frame - something that I have tended to generally take for granted. Occasionally, I do think about how things appear in the frame but reflecting back on my earlier log about the time taken to compose a shot compared with the time to just press the shutter release has helped me to slow down a little before actually taking the shot. This unit has helped that slowing down process even further and made me think more about what am I actually trying to record on the camera.

The first exercise - which I did before we left for Cornwall - was around fitting the frame to the subject. I chose to use the hanging chair that is in our garden as it is large and accessible enough for me to be able to get up close as well as stand back and take photographs. I enjoyed the cropping part of this which gave yet another perspective that I hadn't necessarily seen when I first took the photographs my preference being for cropping the landscape photographs in such a way that it elongated the frame and made the chair look more interesting. Rather than being in the centre of the frame, by cropping I was able to make the subject look almost coincidental but very obviously part of the picture. Below is my favorite of the sequence - the first picture being the original photograph and the second is the cropped:

Full frame photograph - chair in context with surroundings

Cropped photograph of above

 The second project in the unit was around having an object in different positions which was something that I had tried doing before and which worked reasonably well. Finding the subject wasn't quite so easy as I was looking for something that would stand reasonably solitary so that it stood out. Originally, I tried a red flag on a golf course - it was so solitary that it wasn't particularly interesting. My second choice was a little more successful which was a hotel on Newquay's seafront. I took a sequence of photographs of the hotel which looked rather majestic in various positions in the viewfinder. The first was with the hotel slap bang in the middle of the frame and then I simply moved the viewfinder in several other positions including to the left and right of the centre of the viewfinder and even one where I cut off half the hotel to the left. The photograph that worked least well was the one where I took it to the extreme left. In all honesty, it just looked silly and almost like I had made a mistake. The photograph that seemed to work the best was where the hotel was higher up in the frame and slightly to the left. Whilst there is plenty of foreground (the golf course), the size of the hotel and the lines of the horizon seemed to help to accentuate what to look at with the hotel being highlighted by the colour of the sky.

Of course, the advantage of a digital camera is that you can see almost instantaneously what makes a good picture.

Object in a different position - working better

Object in a different position - working least well

The next project was around creating a sequence of composition - I had been thinking for a while how I might do this and started initially at the Eden Project tracing people who had come to visit the gardens and ultimately ending up in one of the many cafeterias at the attraction. However, this didn't seem to work extremely well and I abandoned the idea. I then tried again at Newquay's beaches following a series of people down to the beach. It was clear that most people were going onto the beach for surfing and as I hadn't visited Newquay (or any surfing beach) before, half of the fun of this exercise was the fact that I really didn't know what to expect. I had a few false turns including following the Lifeguard service on the beach which was very evident, some young lads who were playing on boards as the waves came in, following a dog (who I hoped was going to jump into the sea but he got cold feet!) and finally I seemed to catch on to a guy who, with surfboard in hand, was looking for the right waves before venturing out. The sequence for him shows him looking at the waves, checking in with his friends before venturing out and then finally getting on to the board and managing (briefly!) to surf.

As before, I was very conscious of the candid nature of this type of photography and the possibility of being misunderstood on a beach with a camera. This time, I had Sue my wife with me which seemed to help.

The learning here for me was exactly as intended, that is, creating a sequence which came about almost incidentally. I knew that perhaps there was a 'story' of sorts somewhere on that beach and I suppose the interesting thing is that the story emerged quite accidentally and without me knowing how it was going to end. The great thing about the camera is its ability to create a story and record it as it happens.

The next exercise was around focal lengths. I appreciate the fact that I am lucky enough to have a number of lenses which enable me to take photographs at variable focal lengths. For this exercise, I was looking for something that stood out and I found this in the Lost Gardens of Heligan. (By the way, I'm conscious that this weeks blog is starting to sound like a travel diary ..... apologies for this!) There was a very tall tree that stood out in one of the gardens - I loved the way it appeared so proud above all of the other trees. I used several lenses to capture the photographs - from wide angle which was around 10mm up to my longest lens that I was carrying which was 200mm. As I had already owned the lenses for a while, I was very aware of what they could do but nevertheless it was still a good exercise.

The full sequence can be found on my Flikr page but the photographs above show the tree taken at a very wide angle of 10mm and below at the other extreme of 200mm.

For my next exercise which was around focal lengths and different viewpoints, I chose a piece of farmyard machinery which I walked past each morning on my way up to get my morning paper. It just looked so intriguing although I have no real idea of what is is for! For this exercise, I used a telephoto lens which, had there been space, would have gone up to 300mm. As it happened, I only had the width of the lane that I was standing in plus a metre or so with my back right up to hedges behind. As instructed, I changed the lens to my wide angle lens which has a focal range of 10mm - 20mm and walked forward until the subject filled the frame. To be honest, the difference in photographs is not brilliant - on the wide angle photograph, there is some 'rounding' or curvature of the edges of the machinery which I think is caused by the lens.

Photograph taken with telephoto lens (100mm)

Photograph taken with wideangle lens (20mm)

As with an earlier exercise, I may repeat this later when I find a more suitable subject.

The final exercise I undertook whilst in Cornwall was around positioning the horizon - with so much wonderful scenery of farmland (as well as beaches etc), this was relatively easy to do both in finding a location as well as taking the photographs. I chose a fairly straight sky line with fields in the foreground so that the impact of a changed horizon line would show more. The numbers of potential positions with this scene were many but I chose the extremes with the horizon very low in the picture (so, therefore, very little foreground and mainly sky) and the opposite with the horizon very high in the picture so that the photograph is mainly foreground. Personally, I think having the horizon slap bang in the middle was quite boring and I liked the contrast that positioning the horizon in different places gave. Certainly, when I have taken photographs like this before, I have tended to make sure that there is something prominent in the foreground to add a  bit of interest to what otherwise can become quite a static scene.

Horizon at bottom of photograph - nice clouds!

Horizon at top of photograph