Camera Use - Week 5 - Colour and Focal Length

Focal Length Exercises:

1. I took a portrait photograph using three different focal lengths. I then moved each time to make sure the subject (Richele) was evenly in my frame. The lens I used was a 18-55mm lens.

55 mm focal length

30 mm focal length

18 mm focal length

2. I then reshot the same portrait which the same focal lengths and instead, stayed still whilst zooming.

55mm focal length

30mm focal length

18mm focal length

3. I then chose a landscape to shoot and repeated the above exercise (staying still while zooming to particular focal lengths)

18mm

30mm

55mm

4. I used the 70-300mm lens and shot a portrait of Richele again.

300mm focal length

200mm focal length

100mm focal length

70mm focal length

I discovered that with all these focal length exercises, the closer I had to get to Richele, the more awkward it became to take her photo because I was so close to her. It also became harder to focus on the subject with the camera the closer I got.

Colour Exercises:

1. Photographs incorporating contrasting colours (warm and cold colours):

Orange, yellow and green.

blue, purple and yellow.

orange, turquoise and navy.

I found that the use of contrasting colours makes an image more pleasing to the eye. It also helps balance out the image and makes it look more artistic.

2. Photographs incorporating complementary colours (a warm and cold colour):

blue and orange. 

green and red.

purple and yellow.

I shot my dads studio and him playing the guitar and loved the results as he had all the colours that fit the requirements for this task. I also edited these to reduce the overall noise and colour noise throughout the images because his studio has limited lighting.

3. I took a still life portrait with the subject of the photo had cool colours (blues and purples).

before white balance settings

after (with white balance settings)

I shot this under Tungsten light (orange toned light) and also used my cameras white balance settings. Once, I activated those settings, I found the photos colouring had much less orange in it, especially around the paler objects in the frame.

4. Observing The Light: 7/April/2016

10:20am

My house faces the sunrise so in the morning, I get a lot of sun light warming up my lounge area. The frames of the windows and doors have filtered shadows onto my couch.

3:11pm

It was a rather cloudy after midday so the sun disappeared behind the clouds. There is less light shining through the windows at this time.

6:31pm

As you can see, there is little to no light coming through the windows because the sunset was on the other side of the house. There was so little light that window and door frames have created a silhouette.