Assignment 1: Contrasts

This first assignment marks the end of section one, 'The Frame'. Throughout the course so far I have been jotting down ideas in a notebook and have managed to take a few shots towards this assignment as I came across them. I have tried to draw on everything I have learnt so far to get the best out of the images for this exercise.

The assignment asks for 8 pairs of images that demonstrate the extremes of different qualities. A list is provided to select the pairs from.

Straight - Curved

The first two images represent straight and curved in a very literal manner. Both images are about shape. The straight image is the side of a beach hut which has been freshly painted. This wasn't the first hut I found and I actually ended up with a lot of pictures of various coloured huts, all with strong straight lines. I felt this one fitted the brief the best.

Virtually every line in this photograph is straight. When some round items are introduced into the frame, i.e. the two locks, they still form a straight line with the door handle.Where on the left side we have no straight planking, the theme is continued by the painted green & white verticals. 

The shot was taken using a tripod mounted camera fitted with a 24-105mm lens set wide at 24mm. ISO: 100, F11 @ 1/100 second, RAW. I used a hand held light meter and took an incident reading which I used to set up the Canon 40D in manual mode.

RAW conversion was carried out in Canon's Digital photo professional where the colours were tweaked just a little.The image was also cropped very slightly to remove a distraction on the left hand side.

Straight - Curved

For the 'curved' shot I borrowed a friends Ammonite. We had used this on a previous occasion at the camera club for a macro exercise so it sprang to mind as soon as I saw the exercise.

The image was taken in my conservatory which doubles as my makeshift studio. It has a lot of glass and a plastic roof which provides a lot of diffuse light under the right conditions. The camera was again tripod mounted and the Ammonite was placed straight on to a work surface. I didn't use the macro setting for my camera as I wanted a better depth of field so instead I played around moving the camera closer and further and zooming in and out with the lens. When I was happy I again used my hand held light meter for an incident reading and used the camera on manual. The settings were: ISO100, lens 24-105mm set to 85mm, F11 @ 1/4 second, camera fired by remote.

RAW conversion was carried out as above and again a very slight crop was performed to remove an unwanted piece of background in one corner.

Liquid - Solid
This was fun! For the liquid shot I wasted a morning down on the beach trying various things with ND filters and very slow shutter speeds. I had noted in my notebook that the kind of 'milky' images that can be had that way might be good to represent liquid. The result of a mornings work was nothing that I felt would be any good for this assignment. Wandering round the house trying to re-think this, I spotted a very large glass jar. I filled it with water and played around dropping stuff in it and swirling it around and then came up with this. It is blue food colouring which has been released in to the water filled jar using a drinking straw as a pipette. I liked the blue swirls but the light was not too good so I introduced a flash gun and started playing around with that.

Liquid

The final setup was as follows. The glass jar was stood on a piece of white hobby board. A second piece was stood a short distance behind the jar against a wall. The flash was set to the right of the liquid, initially pointing at the jar. This created an annoying hot spot on the glass so I pointed the flash towards the back board at about 45 degrees to the jar. This was much better. I added a piece of card between the camera and the flash to stop light shooting back into the lens. Finally I set a large depth of field and focussed manually on a straw I held in the middle of the jar. I started dropping the blue food colouring into the water and remotely fired the camera, trying to keep prominent parts of the blue colour in focus (manually). There were many shots to choose from at the end of this exercise!

Technical data is as follows: Light metering by flash meter and trial and error!, Lens 24-105mm set at 105mm, ISO100, F16 @ 1/200 second. Tripod mounted camera with wireless off camera flashgun. Camera set to manual and fired by wireless.

Solid

The contrasting 'Solid' image is of a paving stone in my garden. To a certain extent this mimics the swirly pattern in the liquid shot above. It was a fairly straightforward shot to take with the camera hand held pointing straight down and the 24 - 105mm lens fitted with Image Stabilisation turned on. Further technical details: ISO100, F4 @ 1/100 second, 24 -105 lens @ 58mm. The only post processing was a little sharpening and a little tweaking of the colours.


Strong - Weak

Strong

Pair three represents strong & weak. We have a strong coffee and a weak tea.Both shots were set up in the conservatory. As with the liquid shot I bounced a little light back into the frame using a large sheet of white foam board, a method I tend to use a lot. No flash was used on these two pictures though. As well as contrasting the strong coffee with the weak tea I tried to contrast the other objects in the picture as well.



Technical data for the coffee shot is as follows: Lens EF50mm Prime, ISO100, F11 @ 0.8 Second, camera on manual metered by hand, camera tripod mounted.

Weak

Technical data for the tea image: Lens 50mm Prime, ISO100, F11 @ 0.8 Second, manual camera setting, metered by hand, camera tripod mounted.

Both images were shot as RAW and processed using Canon's Digital Photo Professional software. I carried out slight cropping and sharpening with a very small tweak to the colours. Maybe I should add at this point that I tend to crop most of my images a little as my viewfinder shows slightly less than I get in the frame of the processed picture.



Rough - Smooth
When out photographing the beach huts I also spotted this texture which I felt would be a good representation of rough. It was a metal sheet nailed to the side of a hut that had been left to the elements.

Rough - Smooth

In contrast to this I have a panel from my car as shot in the framing sequence. In essence this is the same base as the beach hut, a thin steel panel. The car panel which has not suffered the same kind of neglect as the beach hut has retained its smooth texture.

Technical details for the rusty panel are: Tripod mounted camera, ISO100, F2 @ 1/15 Second, Lens 24 - 105mm @ 99mm. For the car panel: Tripod mounted camera, ISO100, F8 @ 1/500 Second, Lens 24 - 105mm @ 47mm. Both of the above shots used camera metering and again had the minimum of processing carried out on them.

Many - Few
The 'Many' and 'Few' images were again taken in the diffuse light of the conservatory. The camera was tripod mounted and the settings for 'many'were: ISO100, 24 -105mm lens @ 65mm, F8 @ 1/10 Second. Metering by hand held light meter.

Many - Few

The 'Few image was taken on a different day but in the same place. Shot settings were: ISO100, 24 -105mm lens @ 105mm, F16 @ 1/3 Second white balance set to auto. For both the above shots processing was contained to sharpening and colour balance.

Still - Moving

Still

The still and moving photographs are of a stainless steel kitchen whisk. Both shots were taken using the same camera settings. Normally one would perhaps set a slower shutter speed for the moving shot and a faster one to freeze everything in the frame, but as the camera was tripod mounted and the whisk was fixed in position, I did not find this necessary.

Moving

The still shot was taken and then the whisk was 'flicked' to get the arms moving. As the shutter speed was fairly slow for both shots, when the whisk was moving it created the blurred effect.

The technical data for both shots is: ISO100, 24 -105mm lens @ 32mm, F8 @ 1/4 Second. Tripod mounted camera, Manually metered.

The whisk was clamped in position and flicked to get the movement. Manual focus was used and processing was restricted to sharpening and colour tweaking as per all other shots.

Sweet - Sour
Sweet and sour are two images created in the same session. I shot both these in my kitchen with a small table lamp for lighting and placed some pieces of white card around the subjects to bounce a little light back into the shot and lighten the shadows.

Sweet - Sour

The camera was mounted on a tripod and the 24 -105mm lens was used but this time with a 12mm extension tube.The sweets were then shot at F22, ISO100, 47mm Focal length (on the lens) and shutter speed of 2  Seconds.The Lime was shot at F22, ISO100, 88mm Focal length (on the lens) and a shutter of 1 Second.
Both shots were metered with the camera and manually focussed.

High - Low

Low

High

The final pair of images were taken at work and represent high and low. Both these shots were taken with the camera hand held. For this reason I chose a higher ISO than I normally would. For the low shot I got a little higher myself by climbing the steps in the warehouse and shooting down.

Technical data for the high shot is: ISO400, F5 @ 1/40 Second,28 - 135mm Lens @ 28mm, metered by camera, lens image stabiliser used.

For the low shot: ISO400, F5 @ 1/30 Second, 28 -135mm Lens @ 28mm, metered by camera, lens image stabiliser used.

For both shots the camera was used in manual mode. The images were taken in RAW format and converted using Canon Photo Professional.

Contrast in one image

Continuous - Intermittent

I have chosen the following image to demonstrate the contrast between 'Continuous' and 'Intermittent' in one frame. In the context of this picture the wires represent continuous, entering the shot at the bottom of the frame and leaving at the top. They are not interrupted. The threats running across the guitar neck represent 'intermittent' for obvious reasons.

Technical data for this shot: ISO 100, F22 @ 1 Second, lens 24-105mm @ 105mm. Manually focussed. The camera was tripod mounted and the subject was lit by natural light through a window and a little bounced back with white foam board.



Summary
This first assignment has been interesting and challenging. I hope I have interpreted the brief correctly. For all the images I have tried to bear in mind what has been learned in the exercises so far. I have tried to incorporate various types of image in this assignment. Many of the pairs were 'constructed' here at home. I had many of the ideas already jotted down in a notebook which I have kept since the beginning of the course. Other shots were stumbled across when I was out shooting for the other exercises. Not all of my ideas were successful and many shots were taken but not used.

I am looking forward to receiving my tutor comments to see how I have done and take any advice forward to the next assignment. I am also more determined to get better and more interesting images from here on.