Line and shadow

[ewx]

I tried a more angled version of this but apart from the difficulty of keeping hoses, window-sills &c out of shot the emphasis on the rectilinearity of the brickwork makes a better a contrast with the chair and the shadows.

Normally the background to something like a flower is a distraction at best and I try to blur it away as much as possible. Even here having the background completely sharp wasn't very interesting, but adjusting the aperture to the point that the fence is just a shadow over the brighter blurring produced a pleasing effect.

Similar sort of idea, though without any subject as such. I started attempting to focus on the numerous spider webs hanging off the washing line but that proved a dead loss, so I went for the man-made lines instead.

I must have taken a couple of dozen shots of this from all sorts of angles. Several I quite liked but this jumped out as the most interesting.

All of the above shot with 50mm and 100mm prime lenses. I didn't deliberately set out to avoid using zoom lenses, I just didn't come across anything that seemed to call for them.

Comments

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

Was the second shot with the 100mm? I like the bokeh - that fence proved to be a good backdrop.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yes (http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/gallery/photos/2005-09-24?exif=IMG%5F2625.JPG).

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'd noticed that you'd added EXIF functionality to gallery - great (even if "Focal length : 100.0mm (35mm equivalent: 473mm)" is utter bollocks :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's down to the somewhat feeble Canon software rather than jhead, but I lack the effort to figure out which. I might modify the script to sed out the parenthesis.

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

...or just grab the focal length and multiply it by 1.6 yourself?

Looking at "properties" within ZoomBrowserEX, it's not showing the 35mm equivalent line. That's not to say it's not there, but it's not showing it there.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Doing the multiplication myself would still give the wrong answer for crops unless it was recorded what the relationship of the size was to the original somewhere (which it might be, I've not looked). I do try to compose with the viewfinder rather than the mouse, but sometimes that just isn't practical.

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

You're right about the crops. From what I can see, it shows the original X and Y resolution, but it wouldn't record when you've resized so I don't think you could infer it from anywhere. Furthermore, the 35mm equivalent focal length is accurate wrt to cropping but you can't compare like with like when it comes to depth of field (i.e. our 50mm lens might be equivalent to an 80mm lens on a 35mm camera, but 50/f1.8 has more depth of field than 80/f1.8, regardless of whether it's cropped to a 24x36 negative or an APS sensor.

And you're right, it's not always possible to compose in the viewfinder for a lot of reason - particularly if you're using prime lenses.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. Shiny pretty things!

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

The last one (the fruit that I can't convince myself I can identify) is lovely, particularly the diagonals.

But if I'm being really picky - it's a shame that the lower edge of the frame cuts slightly through the bottom of the fruit.

Along a slightly related line of argument, if the washing lines could be bullied into left/right symmetry, and (I _think_ but am not at all sure) if as well, one could exactly intersect a line with the top corner of the frame on both sides (in the way that the right hand side does), that one would I think work better; the cloud would prevent it becoming boringly geometrical.

I'm not at all sure if I'm right about any of this, though 8-)

They're all very pleasing to look at!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I have another one of the peach which is very similar except that doesn't cut off the bottom and is very slightly overexposed (only noticable in the highlight in the NE quadrant). By the time I was processing I had to choose one imperfection or another... I could argue that it makes the point that the picture is not about the peach in and of itself, but that would be a post-hoc justification.

There are lots of things one could in principle do with the idea behind the sky+washing line shot and more symmetry would certainly be one - personally I like the reduction in interval across the picture for the same sort of reason I originally tried for an angled shot of the brickwork.