Nikkor 35mm f2 AF-D; 1/60th; f22. ISO 200.

A good, productive morning, taking the pictures for the last two Getting To Know Your Camera Exercises (the movement ones) and also managing to get raw material for the first two of the Framing Exercises.

I headed down to the Lea Valley Marshes and spent the best part of an hour with my D50 on a tripod, focussed on a t-junction where there was likely to be a fairly steady stream of cyclist, joggers and people walking dogs, working through shutter speed and aperture combinations, and then crossed the river into Clapton, sat on a bench set a little back from the navigation’s tow path and panned with cyclists as they went past.

For the second framing exercise (Objects in Different Positions in the Frame) I took advantage of the numerous flight paths that cross the Lea Valley and the cloudless blue of the sky to take pictures of planes as they went overhead. Startlingly difficult, using a long lens (the full extent of my longest zoom is 300mm) to keep it all steady, shoot, reframe and not lose the (auto)focus. I think I have the pictures I need, but took way too many…

Then, on the way home, for the first of the framing exercises (Fitting the Frame to the Subject) I noticed a unit (?) a stockade (?) – it certainly isn’t a shop or a garage –  selling tyres, with a fair amount of signage outside, and decided to try a sequence of pictures of it, rather than go out again later and use a nice, orange and west-facing (so not lit yet) corner shop as the subject of the exercise.

I’ll write up each exercise separately, once I’ve edited the pictures for them…

So, a lot of ground broken, but plenty to do in terms of analysis and writing everything up. Two immediate thoughts on the days shooting: the first ties into the ethical question of whether its ok to take pictures of people in public spaces  the other regarding my rather tired digital camera. Both of them are covered in other posts, here and here…