Grand Mosque Stained Glass

Grand Mosque Stained Glass, originally uploaded by bryanhutch.

I was fortunate enough to visit Abu Dhabi on a recent business trip and had some time to spare. I visited the grand Mosque and took many images but I wanted to blog some reflections on this one.




Firstly, since carrying out the depth of field exercise in the earlier parts of the course I have been experimenting with focusing on different areas of the image for varying compositional effect. With this image I wanted two elements in the composition - the stained glass and the building in the distance. I tried focusing on each and this one gave the best effect. The building in the background is still very much part of the composition. I had a sequence of these shots with and without people but I think the two guys walking past add to the composition. I've also been noticing in many recent TV shows that the focus moves around depending on the character (or element) that is important at that time (been oblivious to this before TAOP and useful for the video mode of my D90!), so focus and sharpness are major components of composition.



Secondly I have been reading a lot of the work of one of my favorite present day photographers, David Duchemin in his ebook "Drawing the eye" he talks about visual mass and how he composes his images by thinking about which elements he wants the viewer to look at in which order and then uses "visual mass" to guide the viewer through. He says he doesn't do this totally consciously. I realized with this image I could analyse it in these terms - the main element is the stained glass, which is sharp and large in the frame so carries most visual weight. The second element is the people walking past (human interest carries visual mass) and the third is the mosque building in the background.



Of course, I didn't consciously think this through at the time. I just remember being aware that I wanted both the glass and the mosque building to be part of the composition and that people walking by seemed to give it more interest. It's pleasing that background reading and learning shows itself when shooting.

INTRO Project: Photographing Movement, Exercise: Shutter Speeds 2

Prior to starting the course, I did some experimentation with shutter speeds on a recent holiday to New York with two images I am proud of which show the creative use of shutter speed:

INTRO Project: Photographing Movement, Exercise: Shutter Speeds 1

For this exercise I used passing cars to test the effect of differing shutter speeds:

This one was taken at 1/8 second and although it emphasises motion, the type/shape of car is almost unrecognisable. Also elements of the background are visible through the blur.

This one was taken at 1/20 second and the car is recognisable but motion is still emphasised very well. I prefer this one to the other images. It shows the most satisfying sense of movement.

This one was taken at 1/40 second and the effect is very similar to the 1/20 second shot.

At 1/80 second, the sense of movement is still there but diminished.

At 1/160 second, there is only slight blur and you have to look close to find it. There is very little sense of movement at this shutter speed.

By 1/320 second, the car is frozen and the image becomes less interesting and dull.


Lke the aperture exercise, the effect of shutter speeds is not new to me. But this is the first time I have really experimented properly with differing shutter speeds and I think the experience of doing this internalises the effect in my mind more.

PART 1: A start to assignment 1: Contrasts

Still & Moving, originally uploaded by bryanhutch.

On a trip to the river last week, I started to look for contrasts for my assignment. I initially took some shots at varying shutter speeds to capture the motion of the river but spotted this plant beside an interesting part of the river. I'm very pleased with this image, it’s really the first time I’ve used contrast as a compositional method and I really liked the result.

Photographing the image:

At the time I was conscious that this was a tricky shot to get right in terms of exposure because one element of the image was dependent on shutter speed i.e. blurring the motion of the river and the other on aperture i.e. making the plant stand out by blurring the background. However the background couldn’t be blurred too much as the flowing water is an important part of the composition. I took a sequence of 19 shots and chose a combination of aperture and shutter speed I was happy with once I viewed the image on my PC at home. I didn’t have my tripod with me so getting the plant sharp was a challenge, my tripod would have made things easier!

Reflection and post processing:

I felt the water was a bit muddy looking on the original shot, in post processing I adjusted the exposure to -0.3, increased the black level, brightness and contrast in Adobe Camera Raw and then recovered the highlights a small amount. This also enhanced the blues in the river adding to the feeling of water and movement.

On reflection and post analysis of the image, I feel the composition works on a number of levels:

The intended contrast of movement vs still is quite powerful. The feeling of the river in continual motion while the plant stands by is quite satisfying. But I think there is a secondary contrast; the plant is quite linear and structured which is a contrast against the fluidity of the river.

I also think the composition is simple in that there are only two elements: the river and the plant, a learning point for me here is to be mindful of including too many elements in a composition. The balance for me also works in that the plant is takes up a small part of the frame but has more visual weight than the river because of its sharpness and this balances well against the larger white part of the river.

Going out looking for contrasts, felt like a different approach to shooting. It felt a more focused, targeted and organised. I'm also ure I wouldn't have taken this image just using my usual wandering around approach.

INTRO Project: Focus, exercise - Focus With a different Aperture

For this exercise I took a series of photographs at every f stop on my camera @ 80 mm focal length. On a subset of these images I've highlighted areas out of focus in B&W to illustrate the changing area of sharpness.

f5.6

f7.1

f10

f14

f22

f36

I've learned a couple of things from this exercise:

In the past, I've always thought of depth of field in extremes i.e. maximum or minimum aperture that I can get away with. I think I need to consider the extent of depth of field a lot more as a compositional element.

I noticed from the above sequence that the depth of field extended to the right more than the left as the aperture value increased. I put this down to the minimum focusing distance on the lens. So the area in focus is not just affected by aperture - the closeness of the lens to the subject also needs to be kept in mind.

INTRO Project: Focus, Exercise - Focus With a Set Aperture

I took the following four photographs at f5.6 105 mm mounted on a tripod. The first is focussed on the top banisters of the staircase:

The second is focussed towards the middle of the banisters:

The third is focussed on the bottom set of banisters:

And the fourth is focussed on the end of the staircase:

Of the four, I prefer the first one perhaps because the point of focus is off centre or maybe because it leads the eye from left to right.

Depth of field is not a new concept to me but this is the first time I've really experimented with it. A key learning point for me from this exercise is that the point of focus is important for composition when the depth of field is shallow as this is where the eye goes first. Previously I haven't paid much attention to the point of focus in my images.

INTRO Project: Getting to Know Your Camera, Exercise- Focal length and angle of view

In doing this exercise I have found that the "standard" focal length i.e. equivalent to the same view as my eye is 50mm. Given some of the stuff I've heard about crop factors on DX cameras, I half expected it to be 50mm x 1.5 but this is clearly not the case. I need to do a bit more research to fully understand the impact of the crop factor.

INTRO Project: Getting to know your camera

I'm pretty familiar with my D90 but there are a few things I hadn't got to grips with so I took this opportunity to experiment and get familiar with the autofocus settings, flash sync and custom white balance referring to the manual, my D90 magic lantern guide and Nikon D90 for Dummies.

I've had my camera on AF-C for a while now because it allows a shot to be taken when the focus lock isn't activated. I feel it gives me a bit more flexibility when the main point of focus isn't always on one of the AF points. I hadn't really played with the AF-Area modes leaving the camera in auto area, I didn't see a lot of difference between single point and dynamic area but I was quite impressed with the 3d tracking and can see situations where I might use this.

I experimented with the slow sync and rear sync flash settings and understood that these allow the background to be exposed seperately from the flash. Need to get my head around and experiment with which white balance setting to use with this.