learning to explore

obliques
st. martins, new brunswick

Yesterday I wrote briefly about the language of visual expression using the building blocks of visual design. The arrangement of line, shape, texture, and perspective, in a photograph are akin to arranging words in a sentence so that you can express yourself to be understood by others. This was the essence of our workshop which was achieved through lectures, shooting, and evaluation, culminating in an assignment presented at the end of the week. You can read about the main building blocks in Freeman’s workshop book Photographing the World Around You so I won’t repeat them here. I think it will be more useful to share some of the key things I learnt.

Your tripod is your best friend
There have been days when I’ve dragged my tripod around when going shooting but I never use it. Now I have a completely different relationship with my tripod as I learnt when it comes to designing an image, the tripod will help you really see. Because the frame basically creates shapes in your image, using a tripod will help you carefully arrange the elements to reflect how you see the world around you. There will be times when you need to take your camera off the tripod but in terms of learning to explore, it is a valuable tool to rethink your composition and create a clearer expression of what you’d like communicate with your image.

Turn off your Auto Focus
While I have mostly shot using manual exposure, I have never really photographed using manual focus mainly because I have never heard a compelling reason why I should–until now. Shape is visible in a photograph as a result of differences in tone and colour and by defocusing, you will be able to more clearly recognize the shapes within your composition. Once you can see the shapes, you can arrange them to express yourself. You might even eliminate the number of shapes to improve your composition.

What comes first
One of the first photography books I read was Understanding Exposure so that pretty much became my approach to making photographs. I would look at a scene and think about how to properly expose to capture what I saw. However Freeman shared with us a simple approach to making an image that I found extremely useful. Composition, Depth of Field, Exposure or as he calls it “C, D, E”. Use your tripod and manual focus to compose your image and once the visual design elements are arranged in the frame, think about what your depth of field should be. The aperture you choose will depend on what you are trying to communicate with your image. Exposure comes last, not because it isn’t important but because it makes sense to set your exposure after you’ve decided on your composition and depth of field. If you set your exposure first, you may land up having to revisit it depending on your composition and depth of field. I didn’t realize it but that was in fact what I was doing with many of the images I created in the past.

The best place to make a photograph is wherever you happen to be
Today’s image was taken the first morning of shooting. I was in the group that stayed at the hotel while the other group went down to the harbour. Freeman made us stand in the same spot for one hour and shoot from wherever we were. While we were allowed to move up and down and had the freedom to turn 360 degrees, that proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated and I wasn’t satisfied with any of the images I captured. Once the hour was up, we were allowed to move around to any of the other spots people were forced to stand and that is when I discovered the subject matter above. All four building blocks are present in this composition and it is a good example of what I need to practice in order to improve my ability to abstract and create compelling images.