lesson 1

Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #17666
    Renee
    Participant

    This was much harder for me then it should have been! I had a hard time being creative. Nothing seemed interesting to me. I’ll have to work on that!

    #19088
    Duncan Rawlinson
    Keymaster

    Beautiful assignment.

    You’ve accomplished exactly what this assignment asked from you. You’ve taken something that normally you would take a second look at and you’ve manipulated your composition to make it look more interesting.

    In photograph you always have primary elements and second elements. For example, political photographs often have the story or emotion as their primary element and line, shape or pattern as their second element. Abstract photograph is often focused less on literal translations or candid moments and instead is primarily focused on the interaction of colors and shapes while story or emotion may play a less obvious secondary role.

    With your assignment, your primary photographic elements don’t include “story”, but instead color, shape and line. This is a great place to start learning about composition and image control and you’ve done a great job with this photograph.

    Your “beauty” photograph organizes the shapes, exaggerates lines and controls colors by simplifying the background and isolating just the one component of the photograph. Not only that, but your photograph’s balance and sense of depth is always impressive. You have a very distinct foreground middle ground and background. That adds an element of three dimensionality that gives the viewer the illusion of being in the photograph because it mimics the way the human eye sees.

    However, now what I would like to see you do is experiment with your subject matter. You mentioned that you have a hard time being creative. I know a lot of photographers who have claimed the same problem. One good solution is to go to a public place and overcome your shyness with the camera. Loose yourself in the lens and try to be brave with your shot choices. Don’t worry about focusing on “story” right now, but try to make your compositions “bigger”. Include larger settings. What about going to the public library and looking at the symmetry of the shelves or the texture of old books? What about the experimenting with natural lighting and animals at the zoo or aquarium? What about playing with perspective and taking shots from the ground up, rather than from eye level.

    Be brave and experiment. Take a lot of pictures and be confident enough to make a lot of mistakes. You’ll surprise yourself.

Viewing 2 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.