Geometry - Henri Cartier Bresson

Through his keen sensibility, understanding of composition and appreciation for the moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson established his name as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. Despite his recognition as such, he did not see himself primarily as a photographer, but as an active participant in the unfolding of history. 
Henri used shapes in his photographs to make them more interesting for the viewers and his theory worked as he became famous for it and one of the greatest photographers.

Acheivements - Robert Frank

We researched about a man named Robert Frank as he is a photographer and looked at a certain subject he did which was achievements so we went out and took a few of our own. Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society.

Frank later expanded into film and video and
experimented with manipulating photographs
and photo montage.

Here are three pictures, the top two are about a boy who couldn't tie his shoe laces but in the end successfully did so we took a picture of his achievement. The last photo is about a lyric I couldn't sing and as we couldn't photograph this I looked excited because I finally sang the lyric correctly.

Achievements is a good idea to take pictures of. It captures the moment and as you or a friend has done something brilliant or just something small that means a lot to them you can always look back at that picture and see how happy or proud they were and how it makes someone feel in the present day remembering that memory.

Reflection, Repetition, Shadows and Yourself - Friedlander

 Reflection

This photograph shows reflection which was captured in a glass window inside college.The picture itself is rather blurred but you can still make out two people are stood in front of the glass taking a picture of their reflection. When a shot of a reflection is taken either it just been a picture or in a movie the idea is that the person who we can see in the reflection are thinking about themselves and their life. It's kind of like looking in to the mind of someone visually from the outside so we have an idea of what they are thinking about.


The photograph here shows reflection outside on a sunny day of the person taking to photo (me) and a friend. We are separated by a bar which I tried to use as a form of framing. This picture also uses a slight form of repetition as my friend is captured in the reflection but also seen in the background of a door behind us. The idea here of my friend captured in two reflections could mean a couple of things e,g, she may have two personalities, the one showing who she really is is the clear reflection in the window and the reflection taking in the door behind could show that this is her other personality, mysterious and dark as her back is turned so we do not know who she really is.It could also mean she is reflecting on her life in to so much depth that she has split herself in to two e.g the bad things she's done and the good things she's done.


Repetition

These pictures were taken outside the college in a bike shelter, as many people cycle to college and all the bikes get locked up here we thought it would be a brilliant place to take a picture for repetition as bikes look almost the same. The idea of repetition is to show the subject of 'same' if it were a picture of people it would show them all lined up and how similar human are but on the other hand in this picture the bikes are a different colour, different sized wheels and different makes of the bikes. Therefor although it shows how similar the item/person is in the picture it also shows that everything is individual and unique at the same time due to small changes.








I saw this was a good choice of repetition as i was only walking down the stairs and just decided to look all the way down to find that it's sort of a spiral stair case and it gets smaller the further down it gets therefore the camera could capture each banister. This shows repetition in a way but not much of it. as the picture was taken leaning over the left hand side of the stairs we can only really see the right hand stair case going all the way down and it doesn't last that long. It only really shows three stair cases and in a way they all look the same but the lighting on all different floors makes them look different a little bit.












Shadows and Ourselves


This day was a really sunny day which was perfect as we were taking pictures of shadows. We were also taking pictures of ourselves so we decided to incorporate both ideas and not only take pictures of things with shadows but of our shadows therefore two subjects are in the same picture. We were looking at and artist called Diane Arbus who takes pictures of people for her subject. She doesn't just take pictures of everyday people though, she focuses on the abnormal as she would say. She takes pictures of people who are poor and cannot handle much or are homeless, who do not really have purpose in life. We found the top left picture looked fascinating as the sign made writing on the ground but the picture below is of a person. I had the idea from Diane Arbus as she focused on the abnormal and as my friend has her back turned this again could show she is mysterious or dark and mean due to her shadow that is straight in front of her.

taking photos of people - Diane Arbus

I researched about Diane Arbus and her subject in photography is to take pictures of people but not the normal daily life like I have done as you can see in these pictures. Diane took pictures of people of people she thought were different from the norm. Diane was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal".Arbus believed that a camera could be "a little bit cold, a little bit 

harsh" but its scrutiny revealed the truth; the difference between what people wanted others to see and what they really did see – the flaws. A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid ... that she would be known simply as 'the photographer of freaks'";

however, that phrase has been used

repeatedly to describe her.

Exposure triangles

The three elements of the exposure triangle are -
ISO - the measure of a digital camera sensor’s sensitivity to light
Aperture - the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken
Shutter speed - the amount of time that the shutter is open

The exposure can be found either looking through the lens or in the information.
+2 means that the image will be over exposed (too dark). -2 means the image will be underexposed (too bright). 

It is at the intersection of these three elements that an image’s exposure is worked out.

Most importantly – a change in one of the elements will impact the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone but always need to have the others in the back of your mind.

METAPHORS OF REMEMBERING ALL THE ELEMENTS. 

THE WINDOW

Imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close.

Aperture is the size of the window. If it’s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter.

Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in.

Now imagine that you’re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses (hopefully this isn’t too much of a stretch). Your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it’s like a low ISO).

There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room (or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger).

changing aperture changes depth of field, changing ISO changes the graininess of a shot and changing shutter speed impacts how motion is captured.

Picture style and white balance

Picture styles can be used to change the appearance of a JPEG image.
This can be useful when looking for a specific style whilst taking images opposed to using photoshop to edit an image.

There are many different picture style e.g -
Standard
Contrast
Sepia
Saturation
Black & White.

Whit balance is changed for the many different environments or lighting you are in whilst taking a picture.
The lower the Kelvin (what white balance is measured in) e.g. 3000 K - 4000 K this should be used for something like a sun rise or sun set, so a light picture, the lower the white balance/Kelvin e.g. 9000 K -10000 K this should be used for something like an overcast, heavy sky picture.

The aim of white balance is to make sure the camera see's the same colour as what we do through our eyes. If the white balance isn't set correctly the camera could produce a picture that is either cool or warm giving it incorrect tones.

Raw Vs JPEG

JPEG -
 is a format that is usable with almost any software.It's a compressed file which saves space but lacks quality. It can be manipulated but losses quality each time you save the file.

Raw -
Is a format that can only be used by certain software as it requires a codec. Raw is a format that is uncompressed or processed. It contains all the information from when the picture was taken and allows changes such as picture style and white balance to be made. Raw files are 2 -6 times larger than JPEG.

Image Analysis

Picture by - Henri Cartier-Bresson

I like this picture as it's a landscape picture showing the natural environment. This picture also uses leading lines, from both bottom corners of the picture to the center of the trees. I also like it because it's not a busy picture, it's quite simple but could still have a lot of meaning behind it. I like how our eyes follow the road in to the trees and then follow the trees to the background of the picture. After we have automatically done that we then look around at the rest of the picture and try to make a story from it. Is there a story or was it just a nice landscape picture to take?

Picture by - Dorothea Lange

I like this picture as although the flag is facing one way, two children are on the right and the clouds are not perfectly the same on either side but it still uses a form of symmetry. The rule of thirds is also involved in this picture I can imagine that the top line would go somewhere across the top of the mountains and the bottom line somewhere across the bottom of the centre cabin. I imagine the flag will be in the top center square as we look at the middle of the image first which is basically the cabing and follow it up until we see the flag. The foreground is the flag, the mid-ground is the cabin and children who are on the right. The background is the mountains, the clouds and the sky. The cabins along the side of the picture go through the mid-ground and background.The subject of this photograph is the flag as it is in the center and dominates the picture.

Picture by - Bill Brandt

This picture is an unusual picture and i cannot decide if i like it or not. I like the idea of using the foreground (being the mans ear), mid-ground (being the pebbles and sand) and background (being the cliff and sky) boldly but I think it's quite vague. We don't really get much of a story to this picture or and idea of what's really going on. I can imagine the rule of thirds has been used in this picture having the bottom line just above the persons head/ear and having the top line just below the cliff.

Focal lengths and sensors

Focal length is mostly to do with the size of the lens but
focal length isn’t a measure of how long or short a lens is physically, but the distance in millimeters from the optical center of a lens to the imaging sensor when the lens is focused at infinity.

For a camera with a full-frame sensor, for example, a standard lens (one that gives a similar perspective to the human eye) is 50mm.
Lenses with focal lengths less than 50mm are referred to as wide-angles – simply because they have a wider angle of view. Lenses with focal lengths greater than 50mm are known as telephotos, and these offer greater magnification thanks to their much narrower angle of view.

the angle of view is the amount of a scene that a lens can take in, measured in degrees. For instance, a fisheye lens may offer an extremely wide 180° angle of view, meaning that it 

                                                         can capture everything in front of it (and to each side).


                                                         A 200mm lens, on the other hand, will offer a much narrower 

                                                         angle of view of 12.3°. This allows you to fill the frame with a

                                                         considerably smaller amount of the scene that you’re trying to 

                                                         photograph.

Full-frame sensors get their name because, at 36x24mm, they have similar dimensions to a frame of 35mm film. This means that they capture the full angle of view offered by a lens that’s been designed for a film or full-frame camera.

Aperture

Aperture

Aperture is a hole/opening which light travels through making an image have a shallow depth of field, deep depth of field or more or less light depending on the number the aperture is on.

If the aperture is on a low number more light is let through but this can make the image more blurry, if it is on a high number less light is passed through the camera but the image may be sharper.

If I were to use a low aperture whilst taking a photo I would take a picture at night or in a dark place as I need more light to see what’s happening on the picture e.g. in a concert or doing band photography.

If I were to use a high aperture whilst taking a picture I would take a photo of scenery or landscape as it would be sharper and nothing would be out of focus.

Mode dials

Mode dials are simply all the different dials on the wheel of the top of the camera, this creates different settings and out comes the pictures will be.

There are 12 different picture styles on the wheel of the camera these are:
- Automatic
- Portrait
- Macro
- Landscape
- Sports
- Night portrait
- Program
- Shutter-priority
- Aperture-priority
- Manual exposures
- Auto Depth-of-field
- Flash off

Automatic, Portrait, Macro, Landscape, Sports, Night portrait and Flash off are all basic modes and don't need any altering in their settings.They are all fully automatic.

All the other picture styles are advanced modes, you have the ability to change the settings as an example in Av (Aperture priority) you would use the wheel to change the F/Stop.

In manual mode you control both the shutter speed and the aperture, there's a wheel at the front of the camera that changed the shutter speed and there's an (Av +/-) button to adjust the second option (Aperture).

ISO

ISO

ISO is the cameras sensitivity to the light, a low ISO makes the picture come out in fine detail and less grainy than on a high number where as a high ISO makes the picture grainy and noisy.. more distortion.

The higher the ISO the more light the camera can take in, the lower the less.

Before taking a picture i would set the ISO on the correct setting for the outcome i want the picture to look like, i would also set the white balance, this effects the lighting for example it will make white objects appear whiter in photos.

This is a picture with a low ISO

  This photo looks smooth and it's very bright











This is a picture with a high ISO

This picture has more detail and is a little brighter than the picture above.










I also tried many different white balances out these were a few of my out comes..

These pictures are taken on a self timer so i didn't move the camera therefor it is the same picture with minor differences, the major one being the white balance.

Composition and framing

Framing and symmetry

This is just a picture example of two different subjects within photojournalism that I will speak about further down the page.
 

leading lines

These are an important role in composition,

they can be used in a variety of ways.

Diagonal lines are dynamic.

        Lines can be used to lead the viewer

    Unsurprisingly, these are called leading lines.

    

Framing  

This can be used to help give subjects more

       interest, by using the depth.

      By placing foreground elements around the

      edge of the frame, we create a border,

      enhancing the look of subjects.

      If we can incorporate geometric shapes into

      images, this can also invoke interest.

      Another element of balance is the use of

     Symmetrical balance

Rule of thirds 

This is a simple method that splits the frame

       into thirds horizontally and vertically.

By placing objects within the intersecting

       points, it allows for a more visually stimulating

       Image

       It should also be used as a guideline for the

       horizon.

       You can use the rule of thirds to help place

       foreground, middle ground and background.

 

Symmetry

Symmetry is something described in parallel. In 
 photography it conveys balance and proportion. It is a form of pattern that is often associated with perfection and illustrates spatial awareness, often through reflection and rotation.