Find a subject in front of a background with depth. Take a very close viewpoint and zoom in; you’ll need to be aware of the minimum focusing distance of your lens. Focus on the subject and take a single shot. Then, without changing the focal length or framing, set your focus to infinity and take…
Exercise 2.3 : Focus
Find a location with good light for a portrait shot. Place your subject some distance in front of a simple background and select a wide aperture together with a moderately long focal length such as 100mm on a 35mm full-frame camera (about 65mm on a cropped-frame camera). Take a viewpoint about one and a half…
Exercise 2.2 : Viewpoint
“Does zooming in from a fixed viewpoint change the appearance of things? If you enlarge and compare individual elements within the first and last shots of the last exercise you can see that their ‘perspective geometry’ is exactly the same. To change the way things actually look, a change in focal length needs to be…
Exercise 2.1 : Zoom
‘ …there is no approach, approach suggests moving nearer, getting closer, suggests that we are not already near or close enough’ – Stanley Cavell Find a scene that has depth. From a fixed position, take a sequence of five or six shots at different focal lengths without changing your viewpoint. (You might like to use…
Don McCullin @ Tate Britain
Studying A-Level Photography, part of my project included having to pick two photographers to research. One was Richard Avedon, the other was Don McCullin. As one of Britain’s most renowned photographers, I couldn’t wait to visit Don McCullins exhibition at Tate Britain, as I’d only ever seen one or two of this photographs in the…
Thomas Ruff – Jpegs
Thomas Ruff’s Jpegs photobook comprises of multiple series of photographs, many of which he has taken from the internet, in which he then enlarges to such an extent that the pixels become distorted patterns of colour. Joerg Colberg on visiting the exhibition of Thomas Ruff’s work at the Zwirner gallery, commented that “For me, seeing…
Exercise 1.4 – Frame
“The final exercise of this project makes use of the viewfinder grid display of a digital camera. This function projects a grid onto the viewfinder screen to help align vertical and horizontal lines, such as the horizon or the edge of a building, with the edge of the frame. Please check your camera manual (or…
Exercise 1.3 Line
‘Take a number of shots using lines to create a sense of depth. Shooting with a wide – angle lens (zooming out) strengthens a diagonal line by giving it more length within the frame. The effect is dramatically accentuated if you choose a viewpoint close to the line.’ Below are some photographs for this exercise…
Exercise 1.2: Point
A point is the smallest graphical element, if you join many points together you make a line. In mathematics, a point doesn’t have any weight at all, it indicates a place. So compositionally, a point has to be small within the frame and its position is generally more important than its form. Take three or…
St Albans Gallery Visit
Today I took a trip into town to visit the St Albans Museum and Gallery, specifically to see the current installation by Liz West, “Our Colour Reflection”. I’d seen it on various social media pages, and being a lover of colour, I just knew I needed to go up and see it for myself along…
Alana Smith 