Assignment #3 Shutter Speed/Depth of Field

[Kiva]

I had the opportunity to go on a photo day trip with a group of photographers to Callaway Gardens this weekend. Since I knew I would have all day I read several assignments ahead and tried to take pictures at the gardens to complete them. I will not always take pictures of flowers and nature 😀

To show movement I took a picture of a small waterfall. I set the Shutter speed to 1/3 sec @ f 18 so that I would get a misty look to the water but get a deeper depth of field.

I just couldn’t choose between the next two photos, the tuplip and Iris photos were taken at 1/200 sec @ f5.6 and 1/320 @ f4.5 respectively.

I look forward to comments. Kiva

[Duncan Rawlinson]

Hello.

You’ve done a wonderful job with this assignment. You’ve used the great outdoors as your backdrop for this technical assignment, and not only have your shown your technical ability to control depth and motion, but you’ve also incorporated artistic elements into your shots as well.

Your first two images are quite similar in their composition, but use slightly different perspectives and different color palettes. Both images have a limited color palette of gradients of two predominant colors.

I think the first image is slightly stronger because it has a sense of depth beyond the shallow depth of field. Your depth of field isn’t too exaggerated so your viewer’s still have a sense of depth and the different layers in the photograph. I have a sense of foreground, middle ground and background. Your second image really isolates your foreground meaning that your viewer’s don’t have a sense of background context beyond the colors they see. It’s more difficult to see the layers of depth in this photograph. It’s more two dimensional.

The image of the waterfall is spectacular. It’s incredibly well composed and does exactly what this assignment asked you to accomplish (i.e. to show the illusion of movement).

I do have one concern with this image however. Notice the rock in the top left corner is almost completely “blown out” (i.e. overexposed). It’s lost all detail as have parts of some of the rocks along the left wall of the photograph.

Please read out blog post on this issue here:

http://photographyicon.com/blog/2008/11/26/digital-cameras-latitude-dynamic-range/

Keep up the great work!

[Author]

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