Capturing Drama
I stumbled across the blog/podcast/website "Tips from the Top Floor." When I get Photoshop, I am sure this site will be even more useful to me, but I decided to try their latest assignment for a picture: drama.
While wandering around Boston and Cambridge in a photoframing daydream state, I began to think about what feels dramatic.
First, any pictures with high emotional impact due to the subject or setting/color. Like a picture of a firefighter cradling a rescued child or a shot from a cliff edge capturing a hawk sailing the thermals or a bright pink flower against storm-grey sky.
Seccond, what kept occurring to me was drama created through juxtaposition, and this is where I kept failing. The shot below was an attempt to contrast a beautiful older building against the skyscraper being erected across the street (this is next door to the Museum of Science in Boston). This is just one shot of three, but none of them frame the two buildings correctly -- a change in position would have helped, but in such an urban area, it brings in a lot more busyness to the photo.
I had a third thought on drama, but it slipped my pea brain. Perhaps I shall remember it later.
Here I tried to frame a bridge shot through leaves, but it fails for a number of reasons: the blowing leaves to the right take up half the picture instead of a nicer third-ish, even worse, all other compositional elements went missing: the bark showing to the right is a dark blob, the leaves/branch in upper left do nothing for the framing, there is no ROT at work here, there is grass, a fence, the water, the bridge, then sky, all with equal weight. The boat adds nothing, in fact detracts from the arch of the bridge, and the building in the background clutters up the shot. Even in the shot where the boat is missing, the darkness of the foliage beyond the arch lessens its impact.
A related attempt was around trying to shoot interesting architectural elements through a lattice. Ho hum.
Then I tried to do something with the fun shadow cast by an eagle statue near Government Center. My options for angle were limited by the streets/cars and my 12X zoom. I struggled to figure out how to frame the photo in light of the windows and other interesting architectural details. I think the second shot works better, but the little face to the left is more in focus and therefore detracts a little.
And of course I couldn't resist a shot trying to contrast the carved Viking ship versus the Boston Duck boat. I am slightly drunk on the saturation feature of the Canon photo editing software. I hope to be a lot less ham-handed when I can mask and layer in Photoshop.
While wandering around Boston and Cambridge in a photoframing daydream state, I began to think about what feels dramatic.
First, any pictures with high emotional impact due to the subject or setting/color. Like a picture of a firefighter cradling a rescued child or a shot from a cliff edge capturing a hawk sailing the thermals or a bright pink flower against storm-grey sky.
Seccond, what kept occurring to me was drama created through juxtaposition, and this is where I kept failing. The shot below was an attempt to contrast a beautiful older building against the skyscraper being erected across the street (this is next door to the Museum of Science in Boston). This is just one shot of three, but none of them frame the two buildings correctly -- a change in position would have helped, but in such an urban area, it brings in a lot more busyness to the photo.
I had a third thought on drama, but it slipped my pea brain. Perhaps I shall remember it later.
Here I tried to frame a bridge shot through leaves, but it fails for a number of reasons: the blowing leaves to the right take up half the picture instead of a nicer third-ish, even worse, all other compositional elements went missing: the bark showing to the right is a dark blob, the leaves/branch in upper left do nothing for the framing, there is no ROT at work here, there is grass, a fence, the water, the bridge, then sky, all with equal weight. The boat adds nothing, in fact detracts from the arch of the bridge, and the building in the background clutters up the shot. Even in the shot where the boat is missing, the darkness of the foliage beyond the arch lessens its impact.
A related attempt was around trying to shoot interesting architectural elements through a lattice. Ho hum.
Then I tried to do something with the fun shadow cast by an eagle statue near Government Center. My options for angle were limited by the streets/cars and my 12X zoom. I struggled to figure out how to frame the photo in light of the windows and other interesting architectural details. I think the second shot works better, but the little face to the left is more in focus and therefore detracts a little.
And of course I couldn't resist a shot trying to contrast the carved Viking ship versus the Boston Duck boat. I am slightly drunk on the saturation feature of the Canon photo editing software. I hope to be a lot less ham-handed when I can mask and layer in Photoshop.
posted by Jude at 9:51 AM
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