As my previous blogs have indicated I have not been happy doing this part of the Course. A positive has been the structure that has ben forced upon me by having to go out and photograph specific elements. In doing so I had to think carefully about what I was doing and where I positioned myself in relation to the elements being photographed. I also had more time to set the camera to the best settings and to think about what these were. It also meant that I was constantly aware of my surroundings and how I could best photograph them to meet the requirements of the task at hand.
If I am completely honest there were really no negatives other than the constant question - "Why am I doing this?" or to use a phrase from within the Course - "Why bother?". Possibly thinking about how I approached the images might help. Using the order of the Assignment we have:
Single Point - This I understood and although a cityscape did not offer too many opportunities there were some. I usually found that there were a lot of distractions and clutter around so that the eye was taken away from the single point. One image that I did manage to take in Cambridge not far from the City Centre was of a cow all on it's own at the back of Kings.
It is a single point and is quite small in relation to the whole of the image. The reason for not using it is that it is not a very good photograph because it was taken at a distance of about 150 yards with a 70-300mm lens hand held so sharpness left a little to be desired.
I did take a number of small planes landing but they were very large within the image and individual details seemed to attract the attention rather than the whole thing.
The inevitable boat on water presented itself when I was at Hunstanton:
I felt that this was a good example of a single point although again there is some question over the quality of the photograph because of the distance and again being hand- held. The lesson learnt was to remember to take and use a tripod.
The one chosen was:
Here there is a very strong single point that immediately catches the eye. The inclusion of the grassed foreground where there is no activity strengthens the dominance of the lighthouse. I did crop the image to take out most of the sky but this seemed to me to provide an unbalanced picture.
Two points - Again something I understood. One of the images that I considered for submission was one I took of the Cam through Cambridge.
The two points that I 'saw' in this image were the punt and the couple on the river bank. Whilst I like the image I was less than convinced that it was a good example of two points because the size of the punt and the white shirt tend to dominate the picture. It is very easy to ignore the couple on the bank as they are partly hidden by the shadow in which they are sitting.
Again there were a number of shots of planes in the sky that provide two points, the best of which was:
At this size the image is not too bad but it suffers from the problems created by not using a tripod and taking the shown image from a much larger one.
One that was a strong contender for inclusion was:
Here the boat and the buoy provide two strong points. Although the boat is much larger in the image the colour of the buoy draws one's attention to it.
In the end it came down to the one that pleased me most whilst meeting the criteria. Which was:
Several points in a deliberate shape - I took a whole range of photographs most of which failed to meet the need for a 'definite' shape as most of it was in the eye of the photographer and disappeared when the points appeared on the screen. One that did manage to survive the culling process is this one of a flower bed:
It arguably meets the need for a definite shape but I felt that it fails because, although the flowers are in one sense points (they are individual parts) they are insufficiently discrete one from the other. The lack of space does not allow the viewer to join the dots to make the picture.
I chose this one:
because the cones provide the points and they are far enough apart to invite the viewer to join the dots. It is a photograph of a go-kart course for young children. There was a need to walk round to isolate sufficient of the points so that sense could be made of the shape. From many angles the cones all merged into one another giving no clues at all.
Combination of Vertical & Horizontal lines - For some reason I struggled with this one. I wanted to avoid the obvious use of a building with a line of windows and pictures of fences seemed to be uninteresting. However I ended up with the very thing that I had tried to avoid. The only excuse I can make is that some interest and tension is provided by the steel coverings to the windows and the line of bolts across them.
Diagonals - Whilst there a lot of diagonals to be photographed, largely in the man-made world, I found most of them uninteresting. In the following image the attraction was the strong colours that delineated the diagonal of this child's slide.
It was a strong contender for inclusion but in the end I felt that it did not quite work. Whether it would have been better taken from a slightly different angle or more of it included are relevant questions. Failure to fully think through what I was doing and what the aim was is the lesson to be learnt from this image.
The chosen image was:
Taken in one of the greenhouses at Cambridge Botanical gardens the diagonals are provided by the roof supports and the window frames. In addition the apparent diagonals created by perspective enhance the overall image. My preference when taking photographs is architecture followed by landscapes.
Curves - although I took a number of photographs showing curves they were largely of buildings or other man-made objects. I settled on the image below fairly quickly and on further thought I should have continued to seek out other examples. Although I believe this to be a good example I stopped looking which is rather foolish.
I am sure this image attracted me because of the childhood memories it evoked although in fairness it does meet the requirements of the assignment. It is such earlier memories that allow the viewer to extend the top of the curve portrayed to where it begins at the top of the slide. The lesson learned here, for me, was that we assume that the viewer has an understanding of what it is and how it functions. It would be interesting to get a response from someone who had no idea of what was being portrayed.
Distinct, even if irregular, shape - at first this seems a relatively easy thing to go out and photograph and in many ways it was until I asked myself what was I supposed to be learning from this part of the assignment. It can be argued that everything that is solid has shape and therefore the choices are almost infinite. I reread the Course text a number of times to see if I could find a clue to what was required but found nothing. I ended up just taking shapes that were not triangles, circles or rectangles.
The above is an example. The shape drew my attention but if I had been taking the photograph for my own reasons I would have concentrated on the grain of the wood and the way that it had been exposed by the wear caused by the sand and water by which it is surrounded. (Thought for the future - in a similar circumstance go in tight and use the figuring of the grain to discover a shape or shapes).
Of the many that I took the one I chose was:
because the stone can represent a whole series of shapes depending upon how one sees it and how the shape relates to our previous experience. There is a tendency to link something that is difficult to classify to something that exists in our memory. I did think about the Rorschach test that is claimed to reveal something about a person's personality based on the response to a series of 'ink blots'.
Two kinds of implied triangle - I took a number of fairly similar photographs some of which worked but others required some explanation to work. What I found was that although I could see a triangle I was never too sure that others would see the same without prompting. The two chosen were:
Here we have an inverted triangle drawn from the head of the small child through the parents arms to their heads. Easy to see.
The image was taken to capture the triangle implied by the eye-lines of the three people on the right. In addition there is the triangle created by the two dogs and the man holding the leashes. There is also the implied triangle created by the eye-lines of the three men (ignoring the one half out of the picture) who are all looking at something in the distance which is unknown to us.
Rhythm - Another struggle to understand exactly what was being suggested by the use of the word 'rhythm' in photography. Even looking at the examples in the Course work they all seemed to me to be examples of patterns. The image below uses the roof line of the chalets to introduce a sense of rhythm by the regular cadence of the peaks and troughs. There is some dissonance caused by the two chalets that are out of line (most unusual for Southwold) and the hand rail in the middle of the row.
Pattern - a much easier concept to understand and discover. I noticed the following image whilst wandering around the Country Fair.
There is a pattern here but its regularity is spoiled by the labels and other material on view.
I finally chose this one:
It was this particular image that made me realise how much I had been affected by the assignment. I was strolling along the promenade at Hunstanton enjoying the early morning sun when I noticed the pattern created by the steps below me and the shadows cast by the risers and the reinforcing lines of concrete. The image is a small part of a much larger image. Although this pattern was repeated for some distance I found by close cropping one's eyes did not wander off.
Final Comments - like many of life's experiences the true value of this part of the Course will only be realised in the future as I assimilate the lessons learned into my future photography.
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