Lesson 6

[Beth]

This picture was taken during my recent visit to Romania. The skating rink was set-up in Brasov’s busy City Centre. The Hollywood-style Brasov sign sits at the top of Mount Tampa.

[Duncan Rawlinson]

This is a wonderful example of the simplification process of a fairly chaotic natural environment. In this photograph you have buildings, people, shapes, lights and various secondary objects that could have distracted from your overall composition.. You’ve decided to organize your shot in a balanced manner using the symmetry of the skating rink, the alignment of the buildings and the centered positioning of your main subjects to create a harmonious and well composed image. Great job.

It’s a brave photograph in the sense that there is a lot of opportunity for great composition in this shot using close up shots. I can identify at least 3 shots that are possibilities simple close up compositions with great detail. However, you’ve decided to keep your distance and draw your audience into a larger scene. This is exactly what this assignment wanted you to do (i.e. organize chaos).

My only recommendation is to keep your eye on the small details of the photograph as well. There are both artistic and technical things you need to be careful of. For example, you have slight blurring due to the fact that you needed to slow down your shutter speed for night time shooting. It’s not that noticeable when the image is small, but if you enlarge the image the blurring will become distracting.

Secondly, the advertisements take away from the simplicity and magic of the image. The thought of a family at a skating rink in a beautiful city has a magical element to it. However, those commercial ads take away from the magic slightly. It’s not wrong to capture reality, but it’s good to start thinking about how to frame around those distractions, or consider removing them in post.

Overall, great photograph. Keep up the great work.

[Author]

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