Week 5 - Elements of Photographic Composition & Aesthetics

Each week seems to give me a deeper insight into photography. Things that I wouldn't normally think about, such as simplicity, the rule of thirds, lines, balance, framing and mergers have all added to how I look at new photographic opportunities. Looking at/for geographic shapes or S curve of the objects to give line and definition to my photos instead of the basic point and shoot or simple things as adjusting your own angle to take a good photograph to give more options of an uncluttered background are things to keep in mind as I take future photos. What I find as an Ah-ha light blub going off was the rule of thirds. Viewing photos and placement sure does add more dimension and wasn't something I had every heard about.

One tip that I found on a website, www.digital-photography-school.com, is a tip for how to take a good photo even though you have a distracting background is to use Aperture to blur the background to have the central focus of the object to stand out more! "The quickest way to see the impact of this stragety is to switch your camera into aperture priority mode and to take a number of shots at different apertures. Start with an aperture of f/20 and work your way down - one stop at a time. Once you get down to under f/4 you'll start seeing the background in the shots getting blurrier and blurrier."

Light and Color Part 2

Sorry Not all pictures posted for my blog or in the right order, I thought that the eggs and the flowers would be examples of the Complementary Color Scheme and the others would fall into the Analogous Color Scheme, I've posted the others here. I thought the black and rhinestone photo was neat, but a little bright. Any idea how to capture the twinkling rhinestones without too much glare?

Light and Color

I had a lot of fun with this assignment. It was a beautiful day yesterday in the 50's here and sunny so I tried to get outside and take some natural light shots. I must say with the snow it really gives off bright light. I worked with the settings we've been working on and was able to adjust the light on the camera before I clicked the shoot button. I like using the camera

view in lieu of the LCD. But LCD makes it must easier for reviewing the photos once taken.

The first few are examples of Complementary Color Schemes, and the last few

, I believe, will fall into the Analogous Color Schemes.

Macro Collage

This was our assignment this week to create a collage using the macro function on our camera. I had a lot of fun with this. At first I had a really hard time finding the function as it wasn't were my other settings were located in the menu.

I enjoyed thinking of and visualizing what my pictures would look like using this close-up feature. I created the collage in Picasa. I would like to see other programs that maybe have more options to make these collages. I tried to vary the items that I chose to photograph, from things at my home to things at my work and a recent bouquet of flowers that my daughter received. I found this assignment had me looking at things with a different mindset - how would that picuture look, what angle would be the best, and different objects that stuck out to me as ...hey that would be a neat picture.

Amazing

I think these pictures of the icicles were pretty neat, they capture the sun light twinkling through. Amazing to think that these were formed one drop of a water at a time. This winter day started are beautiful and sunny with bright blue sky, then to turn cloudy and snow. We got about 8 inches of snow then sleet and freezing rain! To top it all of we had a winter thunderstorm with hail and lightning! What a weird weather day! I think that we had every form of weather this day! As the saying in Vermont goes...just blink and the weather will change.

Vermont Winter Day - icicles