rejected internal contrast – large and small

At the start-of-course chat with my tutor, Dave, we talked about putting additional constraints on this exercise, which seemed like a good idea. Thinking later, I also thought it would might also help if I established some extra contrasts between the two pictures of a pair and one way of doing this would be to choose two locations where all the pictures would be taken.

So, one picture of each contrasting pair has been taken in the area around Oxford Circus, representing the area I move in when I am at work and one has been taken in Walthamstow, the area where I live and am not at work. I don’t think it’s made the contrasts any more contrasty, but it did impose a discipline on the exercise and will have had an effect on the subject matter.

Further to this, each pair has one picture taken in landscape format and one in portrait (cropped down to a ratio of 5×4, following the advice on page 15 of The Photographer’s Eye (Freeman, Ilex Press, 2007) that vertically, 3:2 can seem “a bit extreme” due to a tendency to ground the subject nearer the bottom of a frame, regardless of orientation; also, I reckoned that there would be less of an onscreen clash of picture size moving from one image in the pair to the other). This meant that for at least the first picture of each pair, I had to take one in portrait and one landscape.

Lastly, I had hoped to get some sort of further technical contrast between pictures such as one taken with a wide lens and the other with a long lens or one stopped down and the other with the lens open. I didn’t manage to stick to this one for many of the pairs but I didn’t worry too much about it.

Then, to help come up with ideas for the pairs, I made took a library card for each contrast and jotted down ideas for either or both concept, as I thought of them, or saw things which might fit. I tried to use things that already existed rather than needed some degree of setting up, spotting things that illustrated the state I was looking for rather than making something for the effect. Some of the pairs, I rejected outright as I couldn’t get beyond some very obvious idea into something more interesting (sweet and sour was one of these); others went through several iterations of an idea before one came up that stuck and was photographable (many and few started as a busy tube carriage and an almost empty one before I spotted the cluster of 6 “For Sale” signs on my way to the tube; then it took a bit longer to find a single sign somewhere in town) and others moved from one pair to another (the yellow and black hazard tape on the metal floor was originally “intermittent” and only become “smooth” after I’d taken some test shots and seen how the metal reflected the light in a way that suggested a high degree of polish).

Once I had 3 or so of the ideas in place I began taking photographs, getting them onto my laptop and then – usually – doing one or more re-shoots. Very few of the pictures submitted were right first time, or even first shoot, although I think I got a better hit rate as the Assignment progressed and the deadline got closer.

As I went on, I got better at planning shots and having the right equipment with me for the first go – the early pairs (High and Low, Diagonal and Curved)  went through numerous iterations as I took in a different lens, or a tripod, or a polariser on the next day and the next; for the later ones (Rough and Smooth, Intermittent and Continuous) each picture was taken on shoot one after I had worked out what I needed to fit into my bag before I went out that day. If I can carry this on to the rest of the course I will have gone a long way towards eliminating the  (ultimately) non-productive hours I have spent on this part of the course, easily exceeding the 80 estimated in the introduction…