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