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Wednesday 9 December 2009

Assignment 4

The brief for Assignment 4:

"Capture and share at least two images demonstrating your ability to control depth of field to achieve desired photographic effects.



The important point is that you should have a go at testing the theory and practice controlling depth of field as appropriate in your own images. You may wish to try some of these ideas:Close-up macro shots showing extremely narrow depths of field to pleasing effect.


Portrait or still-life shots with very narrow depths of field (it is fashionable in portrait photography to have, say, just the eyes in focus and the hair out of focus. This requires a large aperture.


Landscape shots where you have maximised depth of field.


Sports action or wildlife shots with a narrow depth of field on the subject to give a pleasing composition."














I didn't get many landscape shots for this one, everything seemed to have cranes or office buildings in it, but I'm quite pleased with the close ups.  The one of the ball of wool is included as I wanted to achieve that effect with the previous set of yarn photos but didn't know how.

Assignment 3

This was the brief for Assignment 3:

"Capture and share two well exposed images from at least two of the following categories of varied and challenging lighting conditions:



Creative motion blur in low or normal light conditions (e.g. walking, cycling, cars, sugar falling from a spoon, running water, car lights after dark). For this task you will need to steady your camera by either resting it on something or using a tripod. Avoid camera shake.


Low light, high speed (high ISO) still photography (e.g. moonlight, street lights). This can be hand-held if the shutter speed is fast enough or using a tripod or other camera support as appropriate. Avoid camera shake.


High contrast photography (bright indoor lights, or bright daylight, or highly reflective subjects)."

This is my attempt:




I'm reasonably pleased with the first one, which does have motion blur and I think is ok as far as exposure goes, but the second one isn't particularly well exposed.  Not sure why apart from the ISO settings on my camera only go up to 800 - I do find balancing shutter and aperture tricky for high speed photography so it may be that.

Monday 26 October 2009

Assignment 2

I'm running quite a long way behind, so trying to catch up before my first computer marked assignment.

Assignment 2 was to take "pictures of someone, somewhere or something that you really like".  I chose knitting as being one of my favourite activities, and decided to use some of my stash to experiment with colour and texture.  For one photo, we also had to "boldly crop the image in an interesting way", so the last photo in this sequence is my attempt at interesting cropping.







Thursday 8 October 2009

Assignment 1

For this assignment I had to pick two letters of the alphabet and take photos for them. I interpreted that to mean of something that looks like the letter, not of something beginning with that letter. I picked C and F.


First exercise

I had to take three photos of a bottle, focusing separately on colour, light and view point in each one. These aren't even shared on the course, I think they're just for practice, but it seems a pity not to do something with them.



Time to restart

I've decided that for the next couple of months I'm going to use this blog as a means of sharing photos taken for my Open University photography course with the wider world, as they'll otherwise only be seen and commented on by the other students.

I'm already running about a week behind, having had the most ridiculously hectic week last week, so I'm trying to catch up with the whole first week today. As a result, there may be a few posts today!