Sunday 13 June 2010

Exercise 20

What: The brief of this exercise was to locate and photograph subjects which demonstrated strong curves which emphasised movement and direction.
Where: Various Locations inside and outside
When: All times of the day, sunny, rain and dull weather.
How: I had a good think about what subjects would be good for curves, as I live in an area dominated by late 1950’s early 1960’s architecture which is mainly all strong straight lines everywhere. As in the last few exercises I made a few notes and drawings to get the ideas clear in my head, again on visited some of the sites and photographing some of the ideas either they just did not work or that they failed to express the concept.
I mainly relied on one camera on this exercise and some of the photographs were taken where the camera was handheld as this gave me the freedom of movement and others were tripod mounted to give me the time to compose the image.

Curved Bridge.

D80,Aperture f/4.5, Shutter Speed 1/1600 sec, ISO 250, 62mm (35mm equivalent 93mm), Pattern Metering Mode, Auto White Balance, Tripod Mounted.

Bridge over the river

This is a relatively new piece of road built in the last 15 years or so. It actually crosses over an old sheep drover’s road and over the river both of which are in the valley below it. The bridge curves to bring two pieces of road together on either side of the valley and it swoops down and over the point of view from the drovers’ road below.

I decided to reshoot an old photograph that I had taken years ago, when I had first started using a DSLR. I have always liked the abstract curves and colour reflections that this shot creates

Fish in a Tube

D80, Aperture f/5, Shutter Speed 1/40 sec, ISO 500, 56mm (35mm equivalent 84mm),Pattern Metering Mode, Auto White Balance, Hand Held,

Reflections on fish

I this I feel the eye is being drawn away from the main subject and into the repeated curved pattern as it moves outwards towards the edge of the frame. This also gives the impression of movement as the light bounces up the inside of the tube. Previously I have used a flash on the outside of the tube to provide even more light, but in this case I just used sunlight filtered in through a window.


In the third shot I decided to go back to “old technology” and I went for the curved grooves on an LP record. I shot this from various positions until I got the light where I wanted it; I wanted the eye to be drawn through the frame following the movement of the groove.

Grooved

D80, Aperture f/3.3, Shutter Speed 1/60 sec, ISO 500, 105mm (35mm equivalent 157mm), Pattern Metering Mode, Auto White Balance, Hand Held

Grooved

I liked the repetition of the curve and the grooves; and that the eye was drawn long the grooves creating its own movement in the opposite direction to which the record would actually have played.

In the fourth shot, I wanted a curve which also showed quick movement. So I decided on a skateboard wheel.

Wheel

D80, Aperture f4.5, Shutter Speed 1/60 sec, ISO 500, 105mm (35mm equivalent 157mm), Pattern Metering Mode, Auto White Balance, Hand Supported.


Wheel

I wanted to use Macro for this image, as I wanted to get as close to the wheel as possible while still showing the movement of the wheel. I cropped off the right hand side of the image as this was just dead space within the composition and was doing nothing for the overall image. I went for a reasonable slow shutter speed to capture the movement of the wheel while at the same time showing the inner and outer curves of the wheel.

I found this quite a hard exercise to do. For some unknown reason I just could not get the compositions right to begin with and I had a hard time coming up with the ideas for the shots.
Overall I liked this exercise as it again forced me to look for something that I would not normally notice and I find now that I’m always looking for shapes, lines and movement where-ever I go.

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