Assignment 1 - Light

 

I love the way the light is hitting this horse's face.  I like the composition of the image as well. 

 

The light in this image makes it look fun and bright.  The juxtaposition of household (or dorm room) items with the bright colors has a feel of "life is good."  The pink background is a curtain which is backlit by the afternoon sun (as the clock on the microwave shows, it is 3:05 pm).  You can see the reflection of a colorful bedspread in the face of the microwave, and somewhat in the teakettle.  The water in the teakettle and the time in the microwave gives one the feeling that real life has been frozen, yet the brightness of the light and the colors makes one feel that the image is alive.  One major takeaway from shooting this is that one can find some really cool shots in a dorm room, and that looking at normal objects creatively can cause one to see cool things one would not otherwise notice.
 

I chose this photo because of the contrast.  I like the difference between the dark background and the middle of the flower and the deep yellowish-orange petals.  I took this photo in afternoon shade and think it is very interesting how the flowers are so bright even though they are not in direct sunlight.  Like the previous two photos, the light has a happy feel, but this one is a bit darker and more serene.  It could be viewed as being very peaceful and still, but it could also almost be seen as just slightly ominous.  I learned that shade can be very useful, and that playing around with the aperture and shutter speed can give you a very dark background in a photo even if the background is not very dark in reality.

I chose this photo because there is so much going on in the photo.  The tree is backlit, but because of the ways the leaves are turned some of them look almost side or front-lit.  Various branches are sharply in focus while nearly all of the background and much of the tree is blurry and out of focus.  I like the composition as well, and like it much better with a shallow depth of field than with a deep one.  I learned that you can draw people's attention more with a shallow depth of field than you could with a photo in which everything is in focus:  there is less competing for attention in this photo than in the one with a wide depth of field.

I like this photo because it is a very different type of light.  I learned a lot from shooting this series of images:  light and the absence of light can add to or freeze motion, silhouettes made by backlighting with unnatural lights make really neat effects, and light and the absence of it can distort images.  I like the colors and the way they are blended. I also like the way the light streaks the wood walls and floor.  The light is both dramatic and excited.  I learned that in very dark settings you have no choice but to use an ISO of 1600, unless you want to spoil it with a flash.  And even so it is much easier to expose silhouettes with faster (relatively) shutter speeds than it is to try to keep a very slow shutter speed and get close to a proper exposure - although that can make some cool effects.

 

This photo is interesting because of the way the light really brings out the colors in the leather.  The blue saddle pad is slightly overexposed in the edges, but I feel like those edges help make a little bit of contrast between the saddle and the stall, while at the same time bringing them together because the stall gets lighter towards the saddle pad.  The light brings out many colors in the white saddle pad as well, and gives the well worn saddle an appealing tone.  Even though there was not much light in the barn and it was an overcast morning, the horse is well enough exposed to be clearly visible in the background. The lighting makes the photo feel very natural - as if you were looking at it exactly the way it would be in real life. 

From the assignment as a whole, I learned that light is fun to play with.  Light is responsible for making things look as interesting as they do; without variation in light everything would look very dull.  I learned that while afternoon sun is not good for portraits or general landscapes, it can be nice for getting a lot of contrast, and shade on a heavy sunny day can allow for some nice effects.  I learned that I like outdoor light much better than indoor light, but that colorful lights can make shooting really fun.  Often, light can be used in such a way that the image no longer becomes about the subject, but about the light itself - and those images tend to be quite interesting.  The project reinforced my knowledge that shooting horses in dimly lit barns is difficult - especially when it is drizzling outside.

 

The most important strength of the project is that it causes you to look at light in new ways.  It causes you to slow down and to look at what the light is actually doing and at how it is changing and affecting what you see.  It causes you to see that light distorts at the same time that it clarifies.

The project was also useful because it made me much more adept at understanding and changing the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO on my camera.  The time it takes to set up a shot has decreased tremendously.

I could have worked harder at finding more opportunities to shoot.  Not having a camera until a few days ago made things difficult but is not really an excuse, and in hindsight I wish I had spent more time shooting.  If I could do the project again I would return to the barn on a sunnier day (which I plan on doing anyways!) and getting some better shots of the horses.  I would have tried to get more shots with a lot of contrast at the barn.  Also, if my friends had been dancing longer would have played around more with the light and with trying to get a few steadier, more focused shots.  I would also have taken more indoor photos.