Balance in Photography

This image I took for an assignment I had in my digital photography class:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/5 1/50

In this case we were to balance objects within the photo.  That’s a pretty broad assignment, and there are a lot of different ways you could approach that.  In this case I am looking at the balance between the butterfly and the flower.  It almost seems like it would be hard for the butterfly to perch there, and that was the tension I was looking for, so I took the shot.  I used f/5 for my f-stop setting because I wanted to show some detail of the surroundings.  At the same time I was afraid if you could see all the detail, it would be too distracting.  The butterfly was fairly still, so I don’t have a super high shutter speed, but I was also using a tripod.

Cheers!

 

A Simple look at the Rule of Thirds

If you are new to photography, one thing that you will hear a lot about is the Rule of Thirds. Not familiar with the term?  A simple, quick explanation can be found here.  As with all rules of photography, it is probably more accurate to call it a guideline.  Most of the time it works, but sometimes, really it is better to just ignore it.  For this photo below though, the rule of thirds is exactly what I had in mind:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/10 1/20

This photo was taken using the rule of thirds partly because I thought it was a simple, elegant composition.  I thought that using the rule of thirds would accent the simplicity.

I did also use a high f-stop.  I wanted to include as much detail as possible. In order to get that f-stop, I did need to use a tripod as my shutter speed was to slow for me to make the image just holding the camera.

As a photographer what do you think of the rule of thirds? Some cameras even have a grid that you can use in camera to help you achieve this effect, do you use it? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Cheers!

Framing a Photo

Something that I was thinking about when I created this image was framing:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/2 1/250

I wanted the car to be the focus of the picture, but I wanted to present it in a different way because you have seen a lot of car pictures  I am sure.  Capturing the car in the mirror, was also a way to get a shot of the car and its surroundings.  The surroundings are industrial but beautiful in their own stark way.

What do you think, do you find this composition interesting?  What are some ways that you have photographed ordinary subjects in unique ways?  Leave a comment.  If you have a blog post with an example, feel free to leave a link to that as well.

Cheers!

Camera settings: fine, Composition: meh…

This mornings efforts with the camera tripod set up were less than spectacular:

ISO 640 28mm f3.5 1/160

The birds are clear in the shot, but blend so well with the background that you could easily miss them, thanks a lot mother nature!

I think tomorrow I will try framing the shots differently.

Cheers!