CI 1.3 "Working the Subject...100 Creative Ways"

From CI 1.3 "Working the Subject...100 Creative Ways"

Reflections on the experience of shooting this assignment...

I loved the experience of focusing intently and shooting my three objects from all sorts of different angles, f-stops, shutter speeds, depths-of-field, focal lengths and so on. I purposely chose three objects with which I felt I could tell a story. Once I set up the first scene, I found that there was essentially no end to the possibilities of different feelings and moods that could be conveyed by using different depths-of-field, and framing within the shots. The assignment went quickly, and I wanted to take more than 100 shots.

One of my three objects was a dragon statue with a long, curved tail. I found it effective to crop the tail (in-camera) at certain points along the curves of tail, feeling that the direction of the tail outside the frame would be implied by the portions of the tail that were inside the frame. I also found that the tail itself made a nice natural framing within some of the photos. By thoughtful use of depth-of-field, I was able to choose which elements of each photo would be in or out of focus. Sometimes the particular depth-of-field used was effective, and sometimes not. Likewise, in-camera cropping produced results that sometimes worked, sometimes not. In the cases where cropping did not work, it was because either not enough, or too much, of the particular element was included within the frame.