Personal photography
When I was in Oslo early June, I tried to spend as much time as possible in the streets taking photos. For me, as I was there for work, it meant mainly in the morning on my way to the office. Which was good: the light was great. High enough to go between buildings, but not above them.
I won’t only show what I think are good photos here. It’s worth discussing failures as well, and it’s important to be honest. Here is such a failure.
This is one of the first monochrome photos I made back in 2006. It was taken at Dunnottar, a fortress on a rock in Northern Scotland. I wanted to learn digital monochrome at a time when it wasn’t that common (or it was just desaturation and super flat).
This is another seashore photo from Northern Scotland. It was taken in 2006 with a Canon 350D (I know, archaic) + Canon 17-55IS.
This time the subjects are the boats around the centre of the frame. Boats always make an interesting scene because they evoque the sound and smell of the sea, the stillness of the water (this isn’t a long exposure), and they have interesting symmetry due to their reflections.
To make sure that the boats are obviously the subject and to make the shot a bit more interesting, I placed myself where the top of the wooden ladder on the pier framed the boats, left and right.
I also tried to make the background shore and the stone pier frame these same boats, top and bottom.
Finally, I tried to put the shore line, the pier, and the ladder legs on third lines to balance the frame.
To balance the brightness and colour of the sky and the sea, I used a light ND grad.
I would have preferred to have the boats a bit more centred. But if I moved up, I lost the framing of the ladder, and if I changed the angle I lost the pier in the foreground.
In terms of processing, I didn’t do much apart from readjusting the levels a little bit.
#Photography #PhotosExplained #Analysis
I think I will make this newsletter a Monday one. With I May Be Wrong on Friday.
Most of the time, I take my landscape photos in portrait orientation. That’s just the way I read photos. And I rarely crop because I learned to get what I want in camera.
But sometimes, you see a scene where you want to emphasise the quietness. You’re looking at something that just relaxes you, where everything is still, silent, a breath of fresh air. For those occasions, there isn’t much that is more effective than a square composition.
The photo was taken on the 15th October 2006 in Findhorn, Northern Scotland, with a Canon 350D + Canon 17-55IS lens. At that time of the year, the days are getting a lot shorter, the air becomes a bit fresh in the evening, but on the rare sunny days the temperature is still comfortable and the light is amazing when the sun sets.
My subject was the group of people chatting and watching the sea at sunset. They were relaxing and clearly enjoying their time. I wanted to capture that.
So my first decision was to go square. I knew from experience that if a shot has a strong symmetry, the square format accentuates it and makes the shot very static, very calm. It doesn’t work for every kind of scene and can feel boring, but that was exactly what I was after.
Then I decided to I make sure that the pier was centered. That would be the symmetry enforcer in the photo. Because it’s in the middle, so massive compared to everything else, and the only thing that really has colour, it forces the brain to consider it the anchor of the scene. And as it is connected to the left side of the frame, the photo is read from left to right in the centre: you start on the left edge, follow the pier, and end up on the subjects.
The negative space, right of the pier, has two functions: it stops the eye on the subjects once you went down the pier, and it gives the subjects space to breathe. There isn’t much I dislike more than people too close to the edge of the photo toward which they look. People should have space to look or move to. And in this case, it shows the viewer what they were watching.
The fact that the sky and the sea were nearly the same colour (I had a 2 stop ND grad on the sky because it was still quite bright) unifies both and extends the negative space around the subjects.
There was a boat in the sea that I could have removed in post. But I decided to put it on the crossing of the thirds as a point of interest in the empty space instead. It might or might not work for the viewer. For me it works. It embodies what the subjects were looking at in the distance.
The algae at the bottom isn’t ideal, but I couldn’t avoid it, unless I cropped more but then the subjects would be trapped. It kind of balances the shoreline in the background, anyway.
I only had time to take one shot, after that the people got up and walked away.
#Photography #PhotosExplained #Analysis
To start the series, I’ve taken a random photo from many years ago. In May 2009, I visited the isle of Islay, on the West coast of Scotland, with my wife and my parents. Islay is a pilgrimage place for people interested in peaty whisky and both my wife and my father are into it. So it made sense to have a visit.
