Assignment 2 - People and Activity (with tutor comments)

5.5.10: Assignment 2 asks me to plan and execute a set of images of people in some form or meaningful activity with a set of approximately 10 final selected images. Either concentrate on one person at different kinds of activity or different people at the same single activity or event. It asks to concentrate on 'telling moments' and on 'explaining the activity'.


I have decided to feature 'Harbourside Activities' as this gives me great scope for a wide range of subjects. The areas covered are sailing, fishing, crabbing, launching boats and  kayaking.  Here are a few of the images that I will submit to my tutor with full accompanying notes and criticisms.

Overall Comments

A very well presented assignment that meets the brief.

Feedback on assignment

First a response to your query; its good discipline to compose to the frame and only make minimal cropping refinements at the post production stage.

There are four main reasons for this:

It makes you think carefully about what you are doing and why you are doing it at the shooting stage, rather than just ‘hitting and hoping’ that you’ll be able to make a composition later.

You have to be constantly aware of everything that is happening in the frame right up to the edges. This prevents you developing tunnel vision for what you think is the actual subject and keeps you in control of the whole frame.

It means you are making use of the maximum quality available to you, rather than producing a radical crop that loses half your original pixels, making your 10MP camera into a 5MP camera.

Finally in a series it helps create a consistency of vision. If you have a range of wildly differing aspect ratios, especially coupled with a wide range of focal lengths, then you get a rather bilious kaleidoscope effect.

In a professional setting it’s slightly different, depending on the use the photography is being put to.

For example at one extreme I would often work with masks; say on cook-chill packaging for M&S.  The designer would photocopy his design for the pack front, including the type in place, on to acetate which would then be laid over the ground glass screen of either a 5x4 or 10x8 camera and be sandwiched in place with a flat Fresnel lens; with a strip all around the masked area to allow for ‘bleed’ and slight adjustments up and down and from side to side. Then the elements, food on a plate, props and background would be composed to fit into the mask as near to the original design approved by the client as possible.

That’s a very rigorous controlled situation where you don’t compose to the full frame; you compose to what is require to allow the photograph to do its job.

At the other extreme for example I photographed a series about Texaco delivering diesel to an apple farm in Kent, on my Hasselblad, as part of their annual report.

Obviously we didn’t know exactly what we were going to shoot until we got there so the designer couldn’t produce masks.

In these cases I would compose to the frame, either square, or portrait/landscape A4 proportions that are permanently indicated on my focussing screen, but then pull back some to allow the designer some flexibility in laying out the images with the text in columns.

So even in these situations I’m making controlled decisions about the composition and then allowing enough bleed to make them flexible for their purpose; not just having the elements somewhere in the frame and leaving it up to the designer to try and find a composition.

This is the same as shooting for photo libraries; your composition is just as rigorous but you then allow some bleed to make the usage as flexible as possible to encourage sales.

Very often you’ll see your careful composition hacked to pieces but as long as you get paid what the hell?

You can express the purity of your vision in your self-authored work.

Harbour View

This is an effective introductory image. 

With a series you should always start out with a strong image, it hooks the viewer and makes them want to turn the page to see more.

The second doesn’t have to be quite so attention grabbing but it should confirm to the viewer that they were right in their assessment that it was worth carrying on.

The third image can be quite ‘quiet’, a linking image that leads through to another stronger image.

It’s important to create a sense of dynamics and rhythm in a series of images, rather like music, you have loud passages and quiet passages, otherwise it literally becomes monotonous; of course you always finish with a flourish so that the viewer is left with the impression that it was a worthwhile and satisfying experience.

If you sequence the images in order of decreasing strength, according to your assessment, then the interest dribbles away and the viewer’s last impression is of your weakest image.

This also applies to ordering images in your portfolio; start with a strong image and finish with a strong image and vary the rest in between, thinking about how one image relates to the other in the sequence.

In this image you’ve used the initial exposure and post production creatively to create an unusual rendering; it almost feels like the beginning of a total eclipse.

With your assignment subject in particular I think it’s important to create different moods through lighting.

There’s a cultural expectation that the seaside should be all about sun and blue skies; happy memories. I even have this problem with landscape students lamenting that they couldn’t do the work because the sun wasn’t shining.

It’s as if the advice given on old Kodak film leaflets, to shoot with the sun over your left shoulder has become culturally ingrained.

To give a proper rounded portrait we need to be sampling all types of conditions; that means different times of day, preferably season, under differing weather conditions.

Compositionally I think you’re spot on here; the figures, are optimally placed and it might be ostensibly a landscape but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ‘decisive moment’ and I think you’ve caught it; the figures poses mirroring one another while directing ‘his ‘n’ hers’ dogs.

I agree with you, this is the shot of the assignment.

The only quibble I have is the chimney exactly aligning with the horizon line and the roof almost. It draws the eye, giving the building more significance than is required or it deserves. Coming just a little higher, preferably, would have avoided that.

The quality of the ink jet prints through the assignment is very good with just the right amount of border. There’s a slight refinement I would make; the bottom border should be just a little deeper than the top border.

The ‘visual centre’ of a rectangle is just a little higher than the actual centre.  If you add the top and bottom borders together then the top border should be approximately 45% of the total, leaving the bottom border 55%.  So for example on this one you have 3cm borders top and bottom, adding them together makes 6cm; 45% of that is 2.7cm, leaving 3.3cm for the bottom.

Even at A4 size such small variations make the image sit noticeably more comfortably on the page.

Finally a point about getting horizon lines level, another useful way to do it in Photoshop is to use Filter/Distort/Lens Correction... Straighten tool. You can draw a line anywhere on the image and the image will be rotated to make that line horizontal or vertical.

I always use this to check that horizon lines are level. Of course if you do have to make a correction then you do have to re-crop, as you say, to lose the transparent areas created; one good reason to get them level in the first place. ‘ }

There are other useful functions in this filter which I use often; correction for wide angle lens barrel distortion and perspective adjustments which are sometimes easier to work with using this filter than the crop perspective tool.

Out of the Water

And you’re following my advice already by making number two as strong shot too! ‘ } 

A strong composition with a reward at the fulcrum of it. Technically very well handled; good shadow and highlight detail in a tricky lighting situation and a very clean print.

Would have possibly been improved by the sailor doing something a bit more interesting, or say someone’s shadow cast on the white board in the foreground.

Number two on the hit parade.

Ready for Work

Good to see that you’ve held enough density in the sky so that it doesn’t bleed into the border.

This one has potentially interesting elements but it doesn’t bring them together to invest them with significance, either through composition, or telling moment, in the way that the first image does especially.

In that one we are almost prompted to invent a back story for the couple ‘throwing shapes’ with their dogs; a lover’s tryst perhaps?

Here it’s more plainly descriptive, a man tying up his boat with some general activity going on.

Perhaps simplifying the composition by reducing the number of elements would have started to invest it with a more editorial point of view.

This is one of mine, from Brighton I seem to remember, with people walking on the sea wall...

It was shot on a Fuji low colour saturation negative film

http://www.clivewhite.com/HTML/Galleryhtml/seaside8.htm

Ostensibly it’s about the incongruity of the huge American car with the silver haired lady in the passenger seat. What’s the story there?

We can’t see the driver but judging by the hair she appears to be a younger female; a niece come to take her aunt for a drive?

There’s a dent in the front wing, you can imagine her wrestling the steering wheel when manoeuvring that car in Brighton streets; with her aunt giving her helpful advice. Hahahaha

Then we have the punctum, as Roland Barthes called it, of the typical Brit man at the seaside, a bit over weight but stripped to the waist to broil in the sun, unaccountably taking an interest in their parking meter. What’s that all about?

Just at that moment a man walking along the sea wall looks straight at me; it almost feels as if he’s smiling. He knows I’m taking the photograph and he’s saying ‘cheese’. Meanwhile the retired couple on the bench look out of the frame towards their future.

So we have various elements of narrative going on there all tied together in relation by the moment in time that the camera recorded.

The above is my interpretation, other viewers may bring different readings depending on their experience; rather in the same way that different readers of the same book take different things from it.

As regards all the compositional ‘rules’, such as thirds, golden sections and Gestalt compositional ideas, I think they are good ways to get beginners thinking consciously about composition and direct them away from putting what they are interested in slap in the middle of the frame.  But as a working method I think it should be rapidly left behind to be replaced by an emotional recognition of what feels right.

The only time I’ve ever consciously thought of the rules was when I intentionally broke them with an inward mischievous grin. Hahahaha

No doubt if my compositions were subsequently analysed they could be made to fit the rules one way or another but that doesn’t mean it’s useful to give them any credence while I’m shooting.

One of the great things about photographing for your own enjoyment and self expression is the autonomy.  That’s lost if a particular composition feels right to you but you reject it because of a ‘rule’ that someone has come up with through studying classical paintings.

Ready to Launch

It’s the same story with this one as you’ve cropped it but not how you shot it, so you should trust to the moment. 

With the man included we have narrative possibilities; he’s stalking off out of frame into the rest of reality.

“Jeff come back, don’t be silly”

What’s the problem? “Oh, don’t ask.” Hahaha

It’s interesting that you should try to turn him around; conflict resolution? Hahaha

The main problem with the composition is that the woman is disappearing against the tractor, especially as the bottom of her top aligns with the bottom of the tractor, she’s almost camouflaged.

Which Direction?

This one’s getting there, it’s simplified and there’s a unifying theme that no one seems to quite know what they are doing. 

The teenagers are looking in all directions, not regarding one another. Only the girl is looking at the boat, the rowers of which seem to be in some difficulty in directing it. In fact you get the feeling they’re spinning and drifting; under orders from the sign? Hahaha

What doesn’t quite make it for me is the composition; we have three elements rotating around a black hole in the middle.

Once we’ve done an orbit our eye wants to settle, preferably in the middle at the balance point between the three elements, but there’s nothing there so we set off on another orbit and another orbit, never feeling properly fulfilled.

If the rowing boat came across by about 2” and down by a ¼“ that would probably cure it. You might try that and see if it feels better.

Launching

This is your standard ‘man pushes boat out’ shot. Very good quality print, crop wise I think you could lose a bit from the bottom and add it to the top. 

Crabbing

For me this one would have been up there with the very best of the assignment; what’s a cowboy doing fishing in Lyme Regis? 

A very strong simple composition; a few elements positioned optimally in the frame and connected together by similarity and visual movement; the cowboy hat pointing to the boat, the arc of the stone reinforcing the arc of his shoulders.

The big problem though is the lack of resolution. It looks like a section of a massive enlargement.  Given the generally high quality of the other prints I’m surprised you don’t mention it in the text.

I tried to have a look at the original on the supplied DVD but that appears to be blank.

Also there’s another sliver of something creeping in on the right, that should be got rid of, it pulls the eye.  With those two problems corrected I’d be hard pressed to decide between this one and the first one as shot of the assignment.

The first is the more classical Romantic view that would probably be more widely appreciated by the general audience but the second is contemporary and unexpected with narrative undertones that you wouldn’t expect to see in a series such as this; therefore it’s more progressive.

I’ve just convinced myself this is the best image! Hahahaha (As long as it has the print quality of the other images and the right crop is a sliver tighter.)

Canoeing

Yes this one is a bit something and nothing, perhaps because all the interest is contained within one thin horizontal sliver across the middle of the picture. 

Perhaps coming much further around behind the boys on the rocks so that we could look out with them to the canoes would have filled the picture space more effectively.

As regards the Levels adjustment you can see from the original histogram that you are clearly underexposed. There are no pixels in the top 25% of the grey scale which is clearly wrong when you relate it to the actual subject.

To reiterate what you have already been doing...

The Auto command takes the first significant (when the chart starts to rise) pixel and the last significant pixel (when the chart falls to the axis) and makes them black 0 and white 255 respectively and redistributes the intermediate tones to spread between them.

That often optimises the tonal scale but sometimes it’s preferable to make the black and white point adjustments manually by visual inspection, if you are confident about the calibration of your display.

No Wind

It’s interesting that this is suffering the same technical problem as Crabbing and it’s basically the same composition but on a different day, spooky. 

I would like to have seen something a bit more ‘telling’ about the moment, say for example one of the sailors looking back at you.

On the Horizon

There’s a pleasing feel to this one but compositionally it doesn’t quite come off for me.

I keep wanting to shift the whole frame over by an inch; then I think it would work. 

Of course you could crop that off but then I think the aspect ratio would be too square; with the subject being the horizon it needs to have a panoramic feel.

You could crop some sky off the top to reinstate the original aspect ratio but I think the balance between the blue and white of the sky pressing down on the purplish water and boats is optimal. It transmits the atmosphere.

The sky slightly concerns me in that the clouds are rather bright right to the top edge of the frame and it rather pulls the eye. It might be worth investigating toning them down a little in the top centimetre or so to contain them and the eye.

Back on Dry Land

Again this one is rather limited to the descriptive; it doesn’t appear to be a particularly telling moment. It’s some people watching a boat coming in to dock and it’s difficult to construct any more of an engaging narrative from it. 

I would have moved your crop across to include the figure that is cropping on the periphery of the original shot.  Then he supplies some punctum, being cropped on the edge makes him covert, then we have more narrative possibility.

We have a man furtively watching people watching a boat dock; adding ambiguity to the meaning of what was otherwise an easily read image, and, by being an active element that’s half cropped out, breaking ‘the rules’. Good.

It also usefully loses the dead space on the left, making the boat no longer centred in the composition and so challenging us to rationalise why it’s not; when ostensibly it’s meant to be the main subject matter.

Conclusion

You’ve put a lot of thought and effort into executing and presenting the assignment and in doing so have produced some progressive images; especially Harbour View, Out of the Water and Crabbing, with other’s coming close, Ready to Launch, Which Direction? and On the Horizon.

Apart from the two aberrations they all display good technical control from shooting through to printing.

In some cases I think your original framing is preferable to your subsequent crop. Let go off the rules now that you have absorbed them and trust more to your instinct.

Think about including peripheral content to richen the narrative possibilities of having a wider context rather than ruthlessly cropping it out and over simplifying the narrative.

The faster people can ‘read’ the image the quicker they’ll pass on to the next one and the less satisfaction they’ll gain from them.

To waylay them you need to challenge them to do a bit of work in decoding meaning.

The first image would be an easy read without the figures, “oh that’s lovely” (quickly mentally filing it under sun settee romantic sublime type pictures and moving on).

If the viewer is properly engaging with the image, rather than just feigning to be, then they will take time to study the figures in their context and put some interpretation on their findings.