Author: Friedhelm

This is my wife’s purse. I was laying around our living room. I mounted the camera on my tripod and photographed it twice. I only changed the direction of the light. Observe carefully how this changes the image!

Have fun with this exercise!

This weeks photographic exercises emphasise the usage of light. Take your camera and pick one lens that you use for all the shots. I picked my 85mm portrait lens and a 12mm extender because I wanted to shoot close-ups. The pick a f stop that you use for all your shots. I picked f2.8 because I wanted a very narrow depth of field. The use of a tripod is highly recommended to keep the camera stable. The pick a light source. I picked a small umbrella with a daylight (5600k) light bulb. You may choose any other light source even a flashlight. Then set up and focus your camera and take at least two shots. The only difference between the shots should be the direction of the light. Your subject can be anything in your house or apartment. Here is my first example:

My subject is a knob of my wife’s drawer. As you can clearly see there is a very shallow depth of field and the light is coming from about 1o’clock.

In the second example the light is coming from 11 o’clock giving the image a totally different feeling. All the settings are the same, only the light comes from a different direction.

Happy photographing and don’t forget “photography” means painting with light!

The dominant subject doe not necessarily be the largest part in the composition. This flower is dominant for two reasons:

1st: The yellow color distinct the subject from the rest of the image which is green. Yellow is also “lighter” than green and our eyes usually go to the lightest part of the photograph.

2nd: The yellow flower in in focus. I purposely chose a small f-stop to keep the subject in-focus and blow out the rest of the image.

Enjoy and happy Friday!

In this image dominance is achieved through color and focus. White is the lightest color and our eyes tend to go there. In addition I used a wide open lens to blur the leave as much as possible. The lines in the leave also point to the flower.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

I photographed this old lamp at Bodie, CA. Bodie is a ghost down which became later a state park in California. The lamp definitely dominates the entire image. It is the only subject in focus and therefore your eye just goes to it. By the way this image was shot with the cheapest of Canon’s 70-200 L lenses. This lens always amazes me. It is extremely light and therefore great for hikes in the mountains and it is extremely sharp as you can see in this image.

Happy photographing!

The Peacock is definitely dominating this image. There is hardly any background if you even want to consider the lawn the background of this image. You might even say that the Peacock created his own background with his beautiful feathers.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

You establish “dominance” in an image when you have one subject and one subject only. The eyes wander automatically to that subject and the background has the function to support your subject. This week I encourage you to shoot images with one clear subject and a background that supports it. Flowers are an easy start with this exercise!

I photographed this plant right after sunset. There is only one subject which dominates the entire image. The background is warm on the bottom and cold on the top making the flower even more interesting.

Enjoy and happy photographing

This exercise taught me that from a child’s perspective the world around us looks quite different. In this image the iron fence can become a major factor in how a child sees this place. I hope you enjoyed this exercise as much as I did and I wish you a great week-end.

On one side children naturally look up in a grown-up world on the other side they are closer to the ground and sometimes they see and pickup things that we adults simply overlook. When I was actively looking for something to photograph on the ground I discovered this cigarette but that most likely by chance ended up in this small hole in the cement. In order to shoot this image I had to block off the direct sun, use an extension tube and a 2X extender on my 70-200 lens.

Enjoy!

How many times have I observed kids putting their faces close to the glass. I decided to do the same with my camera. I was pressing the camera directly to the window using a wide angle lens and I got this image.

Enjoy!