Exercise: Cropping

Both of a recent holiday in Lanzarote.

I don't know how to crop pictures and then put them in the blog so the only way I could demonstrate what I have done is to take a photograph of the image on my computer. Completely hopeless - I need to learn how to do Photoshop!

Street market - cropping made the photograph a completely different image which amazed me. Suddenly the market was gone and it was landscape view.

The village by the sea (below), cropped to take out the sea and just concentrate on the village volcanic rock again made another nice view.

Exercise: Vertical and Horizontal Frames

Verticals worked better for ships, towers, taller building.

Horizontals were good for rows of buildings.

Some would have been fine for either e.g. the Matthew (big old fashioned wooden ship) or the man and his rowing boat.

I was definitely conscious that I was trying to make the most of whichever way round I had the camera - both horizontal and vertical.

I quite like (and always have) taking vertical pictures. Maybe this will change the more I start to actually understand what I'm doing.

Exercise: Positioning the horizon

With the highest horizon although it looks unbalanced the trees look quite interesting almost making this my favourite of the four.

The next picture with the horizon a bit lower down strikes me as the best in terms of proportion.

The one with the horizon more or less in the middle seems too even and not interesting enough to me. A bit of imbalance would be an improvement.

Finally the lowest horizon makes the sky look too big and not very interesting. This might have been a different case had I chosen to take the photograph on a day when the sky was stormy (for example). This picture makes me want to know more about the trees....

Exercise: Balance

The first photograph shows how the windmills dominate the line between the sea and the sky. The lines are simple and there almost 2 contrasting balances: one between the sea and the sky and one between the windmills.

In the second photograph of an empty ferry the flag adds colour and an interesting shape. The blue and white colours balance and the flag dominates and balances against the chairs.

In the third picture the boat dominates. This is a bit like the spice bowl in the folder with the boat in the centre and the gulls flying around it.

The fourth photo of mud shows three strips - foliage, mud and sea. The mud seems to be the most interesting (to me) as it is shiny and textured and therefore dominate the picture. The balance is provided by the swathe of movement of the three strips.

The fifth photo is dominated by the ship although it is right at the edge of the picture. The sea and sky provide the balance against the ship even though it is uneven.

The sixth picture is of two people who dominate and balance each other - one makes a taller and thinner shape and and one shorter and fatter.