THE ART OF SEEING

I won’t lie, this was a challenging assignment, and I was VERY tempted to cheat. There is one shot in particular that I knew, the minute I took it, wasn’t going to work. But since this is part of the assignment, I’ll be honest and post it as well. I did get one cracker though, that I’ll be printing.

I chose a zebra crossing as my “studio”. There is just something about them that I find intriguing and this exercise forced me to actually go and photograph one.

Purpose: To practice the art of seeing.

  1. Take ten photos - no more, no less; no file deletion, no selective editing. Each release of the shutter counts as one image towards your collection.

  2. Compose full frame

  3. Each one should differ significantly from the others.

 
 

Reflection

You learn so much about yourself as a photographer with this exercise. I’m normally most successful as an instinctual shooter and not particularly strong in staged or conceptual photography, and this forced me to expand that repertoire. I’d say it needs a bit more work, but the pictures that ended up being more successful were the instinctual ones of the dog walking across/into the frame. I also felt so at home with my beloved 50mm lens, a zoom lens definitely interferes with my clarity of vision and I use it purely for convenience, a detriment to my photography.

The dud that I absolutely hate is the boring vertical with the stop sign - but at least it’s different! In fact I don’t like any of my verticals. To be honest, the two of the dog are probably too similar, but I like them both and the one showing all four legs is my favorite. It’s going on the wall*.

It was really tempting to edit my pictures before uploading them for public view, but the constraints pushed me to be more disciplined than I would normally be with my digital camera. I liked being forced to “work the scene” though I did wish at one point that I had positioned myself in a slightly different location. It turned out being tall didn’t make much of a difference!

If I could edit these, I would love to pump the whites a tiny bit in some of them, especially the dog’s legs. I’m planning on doing this exercise again.

*My highest accolade and the criteria by which I measure successful images. Can it go on the wall and will I still love it after looking at it every day?