Camera Use - Week 4 - Texture, Positive/Negative Space, Manual Mode

In-Class Work:
1. I photographed 5 different textures so that they filled the frame:

This texture belongs to my off-white leather couch. I find it to be a rather subtle texture.

 This texture belongs to a tea towel, the texture you see is its fabric.

This texture is the wood on the window sill. I didn't realise that this texture was here until I took this photograph.

These are my freshly laundered bed sheets. They had just come out of the dryer so they had a nice fluffy texture and feel about them.

This is my carpet, the first texture I noticed and photographed in my house.

2. I then took 3 wider shots of some of the above textures to reveal what they were. This helped me to shoot a clearly defined subject that simultaneously incorporated texture.

My tea towels seen in a wider shot.

My window sill seen in a wider shot.

My couch seen in a wider shot.

3. I then took some low angle photographs and used the sky as negative space, framing my subject. 

These are all low angle shots, depicting different subjects that can be seen at this angle. I really like the rose bush photograph because it has a bit more colour in it than the other ones. I like how the sky frames the subjects tidily and provides a clear example of positive and negative space within each photograph.

4. I took 3 different portraits of my subjects Mata and Richele.

I found that I was unintentionally paying more attention to the Rule of Thirds layout as I was taking these photographs. I loved the pattern the stairs created and the grid on the side of the wall so I wanted to keep these in the portraits as I feel it created a sense of imprisonment, something I've never really photographed before. I like the irony of the photograph in that case, how my models could be so cheerful whilst simultaneously being portrayed as being imprisoned. I also attempted to leave some negative space around my subjects not only to show this, but because it was required as part of the work.

5. I created a still life of two objects and then added in a third object after I photographed the first two.

I tried to incorporate the Rule of Thirds layout as I wanted this image to be as balanced as possible with the plain white background. I feel as though I succeeded and I can really appreciate the simplicity of the background in comparison to the texture of the brush.

Additional Self Directed Editing:

makeup and brushes:

For this photograph I was never really happy with the results when I took the image in the first place. I always wanted a higher contrast to the brushes and the background to be white without any shadows and at the time, this was the best I could do to portray that kind of aesthetic. So, in post using Bridge, I created my desired effect by adjusting the basics panels as you can see in the above image and I'm very pleased with the results.

After I had finished with the Basics panels, I realised that there was quite a lot of noise that had become very apparent as soon as I enhanced the contrast. I then went in to the sharpening and noise reduction panels and changed a few of the adjustments to really bring that noise down whilst simultaneously keeping the quality and detail of the brush.

white roses:

I enabled the lens profile corrections only so that the image would straighten itself out and proportionate. I made sue that the lens profile make was set on Canon so that it could accurately set the image.

I wanted to add some more vibrance and contrast to make the flowers stand out from the background so I adjusted the basic panels accordingly and I am pleased with the results. I like how the gradient of blue and white in the sky is much clearer and how it creates a nice contrast between the subject and the background.

Self Directed:

I took some images that incorporated texture and the experimentation of positive/negative space.

I mainly experimented with different textures and patterns in this image.

For this image however, I used negative space to draw attention to the window frame and the clouds.

I chose to create my own images for the self-directed task and tried to think out of the box with the layout and the content. I think if I had repeated photographing these subjects that I wouldn't have learned how to frame different subjects using the positive/negative space.