I watched a documentary two weeks ago titled 'Fantastic Fungi' which spoke about the interconnectedness of nature. I was thinking about how I could portray this idea in a visual form. I figured I could use light painting to illustrate this idea through using a slow shutter speed in which allowed me time to paint around the tree without my figure being captured within the photograph. My initial idea was to go to an open space in the wood with a few trees spaced away from each other and link them together using the light however it was too dark to be able to find it. I settled on this tree which conveniently had a log in front of it which I could rest my camera on as I did not have a tripod.
|
Today I visited London Zoo and whilst I was there I thought it would be a good idea to practice shooting in manual mode, In doing so I felt this could help better improve my understanding of my camera settings and overall help me take better quality images more consistently. The fact that the subjects were moving added a greater challenge as I had to use a relatively fast shutter-speed in order to capture the photograph whilst ensuring there was no motion blur. Luckily it was relatively sunny and so using a high shutter-speed didn't effect the brightness too much and allowed me to use a low ISO and aperture. The use of a low aperture when photographing individual subjects, I feel is very important as it allows you to single out the main subject from the image which I find to be more compelling and also simply easier to look at. I found that the photographs I'm most pleased with are those where the subject is quite a distance closer to me than the background is as it allowed my camera to pick up greater detail on the foreground and main subject and not so much on the background,
|
The motivations behind these photographs, trying to illustrate the tension between rural and urban scenes, reminded me of Jeff Wall's ''The Crooked Path'' which is a photograph taken by Wall in 1991, depicting a man-made pathway over the grass leading into the subtly incorporated urban landscape. His aim in taking this photograph was upsetting the balance of the image, balance found typically in natural landscape photography from artists such as Ansel Adams and David Norton. I think that aiming to disrupt the harmony of landscapes is an abstract way to reflect the modernised and industrial disrupt of rurality within cities.
|
Harmony in visual design means all parts of the visual image relate to and complement each other. Visual harmony is achieved through a balance of unity and variety.