Hello and thank you for your assignment submission. This was a very creative idea and it captures the essence of what this assignment was supposed to be about.
This assignment is helpful because it allows you to identify problem areas surrounding the technical composition of your shots. Even though we haven’t touched on these issues yet in the lecture notes, it’s worth mentioning now so you’ll have a visual reference point when you do learn about them.
In your wide shot, you have many “amputated” objects in your picture. These are objects that are “cut off” by one or some of the 4 walls of your photograph. To the right you’ve cut off a bit of a ladder, the bottom frame has cut off 98% of a chair or a stool, the left hand side has cut off most of a piece of wood and the top wall has cut off the top of main character’s hat. This is one of the biggest mistakes that photographers make. They over-focus on the center of the photograph (their main object) without paying enough attention to the areas surrounding the 4 walls of the photograph.
You need to ask yourself the question “Am I going to let this object in, or exclude it”. If it doesn’t add to the overall look and feel of your photograph than you should remove it. However, if the object is essential, then you should include it. For example, you should have included the top of your neighbour’s hat.
Your close up version is interesting and very well done. You’ve managed to incorporate a few different composition ideas into this shot. For starters the moving sparks create the illusion of movement. This would even be more exaggerated if you slowed down your shutter speed a little more. The only issue I see relating to this photograph is that it’s slightly blurred. You likely took the photograph handheld and your slight hand shake caused a very slight blurring of the entire picture. It’s hardly noticeable when the picture is this small, but when you start to enlarge your images, even these small details become much more noticeable.
You’ll learn more about how to control this in upcoming lessons on shutter speed control and freezing objects in time.
Overall, I think both of these shots are great. They showcase exactly what this assignment was interested in!