Photography Classes Online – Icon Photography School › Forums › Photography Lessons › Lesson 1 › First Assignment- Beast to Beauty
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Duncan Rawlinson.
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March 26, 2009 at 10:56 am #17673
Myra
ParticipantI decided to use my daughter’s toy buckets for this first assignment. I had a hard time deciding how to take the beauty photo as I am not a very creative person so I hope I got it right. =)
March 30, 2009 at 7:58 pm #19095Duncan Rawlinson
KeymasterThis is definitely a good start to your assignments. This assignment asked that you take something ordinary and expose a more interesting component of it through a different composition. You’ve done exactly that.
However, I must say, both images have compositional potential. You’ve chosen to simply the image by removing any distracting background elements and exaggerating symmetry and shape by getting in close. However, your photograph that shows more of your background is also interesting. I would like to point out a few compositional mistakes however.
In the photograph were the toy is laying on the ground, you have 3 main areas: The floor, the fabric in the background and your main object. These is a lot of potential in this photograph that could have been enhanced using slightly different composition.
For starters, notice your toy causes a reflection on the floor due to the floors reflective attributes. Therefore you need to be aware of these new objects created by shadows and reflections and there interaction with the 4 walls of your photograph. The most common mistake the photographers make is being unaware of how their photographs edges interact with the rest of their image. In this case I would have recommended not allowing your bottom wall to amputate (i.e. cut off) the reflective section of the toy.
However, what you’ve done isn’t wrong because you’ve actually cut off the reflection at a decent point, but I do prefer to see the entire object rather than seeing a sliver of it cut off.
Also your background in this image is great. You’ve chosen de-saturated colors in the floor and the background and this helps isolate your main object. However, the shadows to the right of the frame become so dark that all detail is lost and this dark section of shadows creates it’s own “object” and slightly takes away from the overall composition.
The point is: be very careful not only of your 4 edges, but also how those edges interact with shadow and reflection.
Beautiful first assignment! Keep up the great work.
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