Summer is Dawning!

Swans

Abstract

I am looking for new ways to be creative with my camera and I have been challenged here at digital-photography-school on taking 'abstract' pictures. Here is my attempt!

A Date with Pastels

 

My friend and I were being creative buddies with pastels the other week. I found myself possibly becoming obsessed with hands...
Later that day we also enjoyed lollie cake! nom nom nom

Botanical Gardens

“When I experience the joy of discovery, of images that celebrate light, colour, texture, shape, of the hidden beauty in inherent people, landscapes, wildlife, the world that reflects God’s glory - when I'm doing that I feel his pleasure.” 

- Steve Hixon

 

 

 

 

 

References and Comments

 Comments on student blogs

Matt's Blog

Rachael said...  Matt! I love how you have written how you felt a sense of happiness and accomplishment from playing a piece of music. It sounds like guitar is very important to you. Just a thought (the class was a bit unclear though) are'nt we only meant to have one main need for this activity. So what's the one particular need for playing you're guitar, more than anything else?? I woould like to give you an example but this proves to be too hard and I'd probably confuse you!

Judith's Blog

Rachael said...  I like how you discussed that knitting goes back to you're women-ness and heritage. Also, how it links in with you're relationships. Knitting sounds like an important aspect of your life and love reading you're posts. Would love to see some pictures :) 

Kesley's Blog

Rachael said...  I loved reading this! It was good to see you say why you made some of you're decisions. Also great use of references, keep it up! Nice questions at the end, shows you have thought about things. P.S I really do think it is about the taste, and thanks so much for your comment :) & mentioning that movie! 

Kerryn's Blog  

Rachael said… Kerryn, I love the way you have told you're story. I can really see how this activity lends itself to communication and connection.

References

Arendt, H. (1958). The human Condition. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Cohen, B., Jinks, D., (Producers) & Mendes, S. (Director). (1999). American Beauty. United States: Dreamwork Pictures   

Creek, J & Lawson-Porter. (Eds). (2007) Contempory issues in occupational therapy. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Crepeau E. ( 2003 ). Analyzing occupation and activity: A way of thinking about occupational performance. In Crepeau E., Cohn E, & Schell B (Eds.), Willard and Spackman’s occupational therapy ( 10th ed., pp.189-198). Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins 

Galer, M. (2007). Photography foundations for art & design: The creative photography handbook. (4^th ed.). Oxford: Elsevier Ltd

Hixon, S. (2011). Photography and spirituality or the inner world of the borderline photographic personality. Retrieved 08/10/11 from http://www.stevehixon.com/Hixon/Hixon%20Photography%20article.pdf

Zettl, H. (1999). Sight, sound, motion: Applied media aesthetics. (3^rd ed.). USA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Tulips & Kitty Cats

Tulips

Today I picked up my camera

My day has been pretty average today, so when I got home I decided I would pick up my camera and take some photos. I found these beautiful tulips and decided I would shoot them (not literally). The sun was still shining and was getting low so the light was good. I've decided I need to tell you more about the decisions I made while taking photos so I'll have a go at discussing positioning of objects in the frame. I will use the picture of the three tulips I took today to do this (to the right, I changed this picture as I thought the light was wrong so hope it is still inderstandable). I have this funny thing where I always off centre everything, even in my drawing. I use to take art lessons and here I was taught about positioning of objects on the paper etc. Its all about leading the persons eyes around the page and picture. This technique I learnt a while ago and its a little like second nature to me. I'm reminded of the comments my brother made about picture I took of him and his girlfriend, without realizing they were off centred and I had partially cut her out of the picture. (I personally think it is also okay to leave part of the object out of the frame). He was a little annoyed about this and said you should put things in the centre! Obviously our preferences are a bit different! Any way, so in regards to the picture of the tulips you can see that there is no main object in the very centre of the page, just little bits of leaf maybe. Also, it also has part of the top tulip not in the frame and ever so slightly the white tulip. So when I'm taking pictures that's part of what I do, I cut people out of pictures! I put things off to the side and off centre things too.

"If the focal point is placed in the centre of the frame, the viewer's eye may not move around the whole image and this often leads to static and uninteresting composition." (Galer, M. 2007. pg. 8) 

Clyde
Shutter: 1/3200 sec
Aperture: f/5

I didn't just take pictures of tulips today, I also took pictures of Clyde the Cat. He was lying on the floor inside bathing in the sun so I thought I would join him, along with my camera of course! In taking pictures of Clyde I decided to change the shutter speed so as to decrease the amount of light coming into the lens. It was very bright and I thought it was too much. You can also see how the cats face is not really in focus but his paws are. That's because I actually wanted the paws to be the main point of the picture. To do this I adjusted the aperature. Mark Galer (2007) says that "if you change the aperture, the final appearnace of the photograph will differ greatly." It might be good to add that I was shooting in full manual at this point rather than auto where all the settings a chosen for you.

Mark Galer (2007) discusses framing the subject in his book Photography foundations for art & design. He mentions that a mistake alot of amerture photographers make is that they "stand too far away from their subject matter, in a desire to include everything and their photographs become too busy, unstructured and cluttered with unwwanted detail." (pg. 4) He also discusses filling the frame and how it is okay to "miss out some detail" (pg. 6). 

Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear sharp in an image. This can be influenced by aperture and focal distance. Larger apertures (smaller f/stop number) and closer focusing distances produce a smaller depth of field. So how much of the background you will see. As you can see in the picture of Clyde above the aperture is f/5, a small number, so the farthest obecject, his face, does not appear in sharp focus.

So I hope that's given you more of an insight as to some of the decisions I make while taking pictures.

Reference

Galer, M. (2007). Photography foundations for art & design: The creative photography handbook. (4^th ed.). Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.

Story

The last time I picked my camera up was on Wednesday. I had just gotten back from school and as I was walking up the drive I saw that the ewe was finally having her lambs! So I rushed upstairs, put my gear down, and grabbed my camera. I didn’t really take pictures at first just kind of watched. Besides my lens couldn’t zoom close enough! Giving birth is a long process so there wasn’t much to see so I found myself just hanging around outside with m camera, I didn’t want to go inside out of the sun and do work. Kim was also outside working on his project, digging holes so I was also chatting with him and just enjoying being outside. As I was doing this I found myself looking around/observing nature and my surroundings and just admiring it really. There was the sheep in the paddock, Kim working away and all his tools lying around, barb wire fencing, wooden posts, and lots of things! With my camera in one hand I began to shoot and found the beauty in these objects; the wound around barbed wire fence with one leaf wrapped in it and the wooden posts with fungi on top. There were many other things that I took pictures of but I was not happy with the shot so just moved on. I also experimented with the settings on my camera, such as depth of field, and had a go at taking pictures of Kim at work as I want to explore the portrait side of photography. I didn’t realize there were still so many things I could photograph around my home and I was really pleased! After taking photos I ventured on inside to put them on my computer where I would edit them if necessary, and I did.    

  

'One of the greatest gifts of photography is it “helps to keep our cups full… photography always fills us with beauty and joy and energy.”' 

(Dewitt Jones, Outdoor Photographer, May 2006, p. 84. As cited in Hixon, S. (2011)

Reference

 Hixon, S. (2011). Photography and spirituality or the inner world of the borderline photographic personality. Retrieved 08/10/11 from http://www.stevehixon.com/Hixon/Hixon%20Photography%20article.pdf