Find a viewpoint outdoors that gives a reasonably interesting landscape in which there is unbroken and clear horizon. Take a series of images of the horizon in different positions and note whether you think it works.
Living in the Forest of Dean means the majority of horizons will have trees on them :D
This set of images were taken at Eastbach, the track in the foreground leads to a small airfield. It was an overcast and cloudy day and started raining hard just after I finished taking these images.
The overcast day however it has meant I've been able to capture some drama in the sky and using a 20mm lens has assisted this. In these images I've converted them to black and white and adjusted the structure to give some drama to the cloud elements in the images.
Image 1
The horizon placed high gives focus to the ground element and much less to the sky. The black and white conversion method gives a good range of tones and adds to a desolate and exposed feeling
Image 2
The horizon is placed a little low, now on the upper horizontal third. The landscape still dominates the image.
Image 3
The horizon is now almost centred, just above the middle so that now neither sky or landscape dominate the image
Image 4
The horizon now just below centre so the sky dominates the image. The brightness of the sky is making exposure more difficult hence the darker foreground. To help avoid this a graduated ND filter would help with this
Image 5
The horizon is now placed on the lower horizontal third and now makes the sky the dominant element in the image.
Image 6
The horizon is now placed lower in the image and the sky is obviously the dominate element in the image. The foreground is under exposed as the sky dominates the scene and also the camera's exposure processing. The layer effect of the cloud captured in the image in this way does seem to give an enclosed feeling
Using the 1/3, 2/3 rule then images 2 and 5 conform to this but for me Image 4 appears best to my eye where the horizon is between a bottom third and halfway. This will no doubt vary from image to image depending on what is in the frame.
Image 4 works best for me because it captures a dynamic cloudy sky which dominates the image and there is much iinterest I think in this for the viewer but there is sufficient landscape within the image to give an overall feeling of exposre and isolation with the track in the bottom right perhaps restoring a feeling that isolation may not be permanent. Overall this image for me appears to have a better balance than the others. The black and white conversion gives a good range of tones and textures across both sky and landscape.
Exercise Leaning's
a) Dividing the frame using the horizon can make the chosen element of the image more dominant and therefore subject to the photographer's visualisation will be the stronger theme in the image.
b) Balance within a frame using the horizon is often best placed when on an upper or lower third though as we have seen in other exercises these "rules" are not rules but simply guidelines and the photographer is free to create a balance that is key to his eye.
c) Exposure is a major consideration as the camera will often have difficulty exposing both a lighter sky and a darker landscape and invariably one will be over exposed or under exposed in order to correctly expose the other. Graduated ND filters will assist this say by letting less light from the sky hit the camera's sensor and so help enable both to be correctly exposed. I've not used any filters for this exercise
d) A 20mm lens can help capture good drama in cloudy skies, especially when post processing includes some structure changes
e) Horizon positioning can completely alter the feeling given to the viewer of the image
f) As always with digital cameras its good to take multiple images and even if the key position has already been decided upon. Taking multiple images with minor horizon postioning changes can be helpful later when looking over these to decide if one works better than the others even if the change is minor.
Hi, Warren. Excellent set of photos. I'm with you on Image 4 as being the best of the group. I seem to have had the same difficulty with over exposure as I took in more of the sky. I actually had an ND filter with me that day but never thought to use it. There are often so many variables to consider and suppose one of the marks of a good photographer is being able to be run through them every time you prepare to take a photo.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
Hey Jeff, thanks for the feedback and the comments. You are the first one to comment on my blog so far so thats made me happy!
ReplyDeleteI find at the moment in taking photographs for the exercises at times I allow myself to concentrate too much on the exercise and I sometimes forgot some photography basics and lessons I've learnt before. You'll see my comments on this in the next excercise of 20 pairs!
I agree there is a lot to think about and the pro photographer will be considering potential use of the ND filters before he has left the house I'm sure!
On the plus side in the critique of our own images at least we have both recognised this and in a different situation would likely have gone back at a later date selected the image view considered best (in my case image 4) and then photographed it again perhaps with multiple images with varying graduated ND filters.
Of course had we been back multiple times and reshot the scene until we were 100% happy would would only have shown the final image and no-one would be any the wiser! I wonder how many pro-photgraphers actually do this - we may be surprised!
Good luck to you on the course. It seems we are both almost ready for our first assignment. Do leave me the url to your learning blog
Cheers!