Composition of an image

First off, I'm no expert far from it but I'm learning that you have to build the image more than just pointing a lens at what's in front of you.

I recently visited the area where I was brought up which is part of the Cotswolds and has some of the most beautiful almost un touched villages around, but with that said, they still have things like satellite dishes, sun umbrella's and of course our favourite, cars in the way at times.

The village of Howell has about 12 houses that make up the village and a church with a mermorial cross that is centre of the village. When I arrived, one of the locals was out washing his car, while a lady was sat on a step of the memorial cross, and by the side of the church was a car parked up with a lady reading a magazine. Now when I point these things out it does seem slightly weird, but that was the scene.

I had a number of images that I wanted to do that would be worked into HDR, since I know the village well, I had an idea of what the composition was going to be. So I parked up and got my chair out and looked around. I wanted two images of the church and one of the memorial cross, but there was things in the way like the lady sat down and the car. So I put the camera around my neck and was about to go and speak to the lady in the car to ask her nicely if she could just move it back so that I could get the shot I wanted. The thing is, when you see an image but have a person that's in the way of the shot is not to be scared to go up and ask them nicely if they could just move for a couple of minutes and you'll be out of their way within a few minutes. Peoeple can be nice if you explain what your doing and why and when your done, you can show them the shot so that they can see why you asked if they could move.

But before I could get there, a 4x4 pulled up and the women sat on the step of the memorial cross was up and getting into the vehicle and then before I knew it, the women in the car had got out and locked her car and walked over and got in as well. Now the weird thing is that I had been there a few minutes and yet these two ladies acted like they didn't know each other, but got into the same vehicle and drove off!

OK, enough of the weird. 

So I was left with one image of the church and this time round I had my Sigma 10-20 wide angle lens to take the shot. When you look at the image you could say I could of moved more to the left to get more of the church in the picture, but then the one of trees would of obscured the front entrance of the church which is a point of interest of the church. If I had moved more to the left, then all I would of gained is the side part of the church which is of little interest. So I stuck with getting the major points of the roof, the main entrance and 99% of the main window, and filling the main frame with the main point of eye being the church front with the trees filling the sides of the image.

The stone wall does a good job in that it leads away as you look from right to left, but still takes you to view of the church that's not an obscure view that you can get with a lens like this.

The thing to point out is that I had move from the right to the left of the church to see what kind of image I would get from being at a certain point along the wall. There is a lovely little white gate that leads to the front door of the church and I have done that image before, so wasn't going to do the same image again and it didn't work with the 10-20 as I did have a look just to make sure. With the use of the tripod, I feel that I got the best angle from my height position of the church and I can say that I'm happy with composition of the church.

So if you have time and space, its worth looking from right to left or either way through the lens to see what kind of image you can compose. Maybe you have a few different lenses to try and see what can be achieved, move to different possible positions to see what works and doesn't work. I personally think that there's no right or wrong shot if you've seen what you can do, someone else can go along and choose a different angle from me, doesn't mean that either shot is better than the other as its just a difference of angle to show in the image which I've done one or two others in the past, so I wanted something different for me.

This second image is obscured and now that I look at it, the seems like it lacking something as all your really looking at is a garden rock wall with a bush above, with some roof tops and at the front of the image you have some of the stone fencing from the memorial cross slightly blurred because I used a 35mm lens. But what you can't see is the vehicles that were parked at either end of the image and is why I went as close as I did. But as an HDR, its give me something to work on and so the outcome of that part of the image, I'm quite pleased with.

I guess what I'm saying in this is that its ok for you to be critical of your own work, it was a sample image that might have work, but I know I had little movement to capture the country scene that I was trying to put together. But if I go back (and I will), I know where I've gone wrong and work towards reviewing the angle that I can get next time to showthe lovely building that's there.

This image talks for its self in that its an image of the memorial cross and I think its clear to see that I used my 10-20 wide angle lens. With this image there are three points to the image, the road to the left, the road to the right and the cross its self.

When I set up the camera and looked through, I had more of the road infront of me and the front stone with the chain on it was dead centre. The image isn't about this stone and its about the cross, so I moved slightly right, but another part the image was the clump of trees to the right of the small stone building that I wanted to use to fill that space. The final part of the jigsaw was to have the building on left in view right to its own edge of the out building.

My final part was the height that I set the camera. When using a wide angle lens like this, is that it can obscure objects, I.e. The stone at the front is larger than the rest as they all look simular in size or a normal resize of looking at objects of the same height that go further away, and the cross looks normal.

Granted there are some things that I would of liked not to be in the frame like the pole line and the white lines in the road, but these are things that I can live with. As I explained these images were for the purpose of doing them in HDR, what I love about HDR is its effect to bring objects of the image more real in its contrast, exposure and colours. I would never of got the cloud formation that's there without maybe using a high density filter, but then the rest of the image would of been too dark. The sunlight comes about 10 o'clock from my left and brightens the sky from that area and shows the shadow of the cross falling across the road.

I think sometimes we can be too quick with the shutter when in reality we have all the time in the world, I often revisit a sight because I missed something that I didn't realise till I got home. I could of taken my laptop with me to check the images, but this was a day out and not a full on shoot for a certain purpose. We need to have fun in photography when its our own time and what we miss things, they can be redone in another visit as you know what you wanted in the image and can work to that point next time.

I thought I would show this image as this is about composition and how we can use space. I've been spending sometime experimenting in having subjects not dead centre of my image, but to the left to right. This is an example of how I've placed the person in the shot to the right, when you look at the image your drawn to this point, but to me it doesn't look obscured as you have the person walking pass in the foreground as well as the shop window, then to the far right you have this kind of wooden slats that at an angle. None of this matters as its just about filling space, what's nice in this HDR is how the stone that he's sat on and bottom of the object to the left of him blends together with his jeans. Then you have his jacket nearly the same colour as his lunchbox, neither of these objects have been coloured to make the effect, its totally natural. In that sense.

I could find more to talk about the image but again its just an example of composition and filling of space can work, and at the right angle and height.

I don't have at this point in my life of photography an area that I feel I need to be set in, I enjoy landscapes and city views as I enjoy people and and black and white, its great to be free and to express yourself in different forms of images. HDR is an area that enjoy and I have a burst over a few months at doing them and then move back to another form of photography.

What ever we do, we are always experimenting with different images set at different angles, and by re tracing our steps by going back we can fix the problems that we've found at the monitor that we missed when looking through the viewfinder. The viewfinder is a small area to look at the scene in front of us, I've found myself spending time not just looking at the centre point of what will be the image, but what else is there that maybe I don't want and by moving slightly, I can get rid of that so less work in cropping the image that might make it seem awkward in the finished post processing.

Thanks for reading, AndyD 

A New Semesta

One of the assignments for this samesta is reality or unreality image. This may sound slightly weird but when you look at what's being done by a lot of photographers by taking images and re sampling them into one for another, there is a touch of unreality.

The first thing that came to mind for me is HDR. HDR has not made much impact in the world of galleries or billboards when you look around. There are some amazing images that have been reconstructed into HDR by some real talented people. For myself, I've done a few and had good feedback, specially in the last six months or so.

I was reading a post by John Lang who is the chair for the NPPA's Ethic's & Stanards Comminttee on the Natianional Press Photographers Assocaiton website and they had what I guess was an example image by the well known HDR photographer, Trey Ratcliff, but it seems to have been taken down but the spot still is still there. But the subject was about several photography directors and picture editors asking about the ethical consideration of HDR photography and using HDR images in their publications. The short answer was no they couldn't be seen to be used because of the total editing of an image to make it more dramatic or less dramatic of the event that it covered would be un ethical in journalism of newspapers and such like.

Personally I get that, as the public have the right to see the actual image in its entirety, but with that said, HDR could be used in some advertisements to promote a product, but not to show it as a copy of a product but as an external support to a product, not sure if that makes sense or not, but it could help to give adverts that WOW factor which is what HDR images do.

The crazy thing is that maybe some photographers don't like HDR, same could be said that some don't like black and white or digital. But if you show an HDR image to a the general public alongside the normal, they will go for the HDR as the one they like, there is testimonial to this on the net. 

Graphic art has made it to the galleries and exhibitions, but why hasn't HDR, what is so wrong that exhibitors aren't crying out for photographers work to be shown, I guess that's a big question that's been asked for sometime now and know one has done an interview or publish why they don't show HDR images.

When you start out HDR in our form, you get your five or seven images depending on what you doing sorted with different exposure at increments of +1 or -1, you need to them into a software that can batch images and use the tools for HDR like Photomatix. Photomatix has just released their latest version which is 5 and at first hand it looks good with the improvement. 

The thing is that when you start out, its so easy to over cook an image as you keep moving sliders to get more dramatic than maybe a simple look that does the job. As you learn and read, this kind of software is only the first stage and you have to take the HDR into Photoshop and start working with some of the other exposures that you've taken as part on the main image. Layering, masking and painting with a tablet pen is what will give that rich and fine image that you've been working on creating.

It's where photographers can become artist with the canvas being the RAW images and the tablet pen and the paint brush.

It' s one of the great things about digital is that you can work all day on an image and then sit back and look to see if you feel its turned out how you envisage it to be, sometimes the vision can get obscured or something that you didn't think about can come into the image. But there is a flip side in that you can look at the finished piece and then decide that its not got what you were looking for, but you don't have to be totally dishearten as you can start from scratch as you have the original images to begin again.

Question - is HDR reality or unreality?

There are today two forms of HDR that can be a bit confusing. Some of the latest camera's or phones have what they call HDR capability, what they do is take three images at different exposures and then tie them together by the camera software. I have to say images done by camera like this do look real sharp and great colours. So that's one HDR. 

The other is as mentioned using a software like Photomatix or NIK HDR and this turns the image into something that looks completely different to the camera version and takes the format to another level and produces an image that is very different from the camera version.

So you could say that a camera version is more reality and a software version is more unreality.

The unreality version has that great colour, contrast and look of depth, but then its also includes a look of fantasy or in some cases cartoon like as the colours and look are more pastel coloured and look more like a watercolour, this is a great look in itself, but the photographers that can make the images look magical and keep that realism of the image can create a fantasy and you could say stylish look to an image.

Google+ has a stepping stone for photographers working in HDR, they even have their own HDR software which is part of the NIK collection. So more has to be done to push this new and great photography or art, depending on how you see it.

When I spoke to my tutor about this assignment and using HDR, it was a question of why and how did I see it being part of unreality, the only word is that I can create a fantasy image with the use of the camera, to give the subject that fantasy look, I will then work on to create the unreality look in the image that I will put forward. I have to say I didn't get a feeling of enthusiasm from them, and maybe because they aren't a fan of HDR, but I hope that when done, they will see pass that and see through the process that I put into the raw image to finish with the edited image that will be unreality as its obscured like any other unreality image that's pulled apart in Photoshop to get the final look.

Thanks for reading, AndyD