LIS5313

compositions

We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.

ORIGINAL
CROP
ORIGINAL: “Zorki 4 + Industar-61 L/D – People at Crosswalk” by Kojotisko is licensed under public domain.
License: CC Public Domain Original image: Flickr

CROP: “Faces” by Elizabeth Anderson is license under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

I tend to gravitate towards a black and white color palette. Black and white images, black and white clothing. I think there is something very emotive and chic about focusing on shadows and relying on the composition. This is why designers tend to design logos in black and white first because you can focus on composition and not get distracted with color.

The original image is actually really nice. The composition creates an interested split between the bright, open section and the darkness of the cluster of people. It creates a strong sense of airy (sky/street) vs dense (people).

In my crop I wanted to focus in on the faces I actually found to be the most interesting, because when you close in on the man’s face, his facial features and expression are somewhat puzzling. is he angry? Confused? Annoyed by the kid? Then we get to the kid! That side eye is everything. Who’s he looking at?

There is a real narrative that comes forward when this image is cropped like this and you also get a much more constricted view of the man/child. His back is literally up against a wall and in both but his face and the space in front of him is much more limited.

Entire stories can come from one image even when we aren’t 100% sure what we’re seeing.

February 1, 2022 by Student Posts 2

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

There is an old saying that says that a picture is worth a thousand words. I took that saying and firmly implanted it in my head. At any given time, there are so many things happening. In the photo below, we see a photo (presumably) of a man standing next to his rickshaw bicycle with motorbikes in front of him. The image is full of life and stories, way more than a thousand. There is so much going on. But what I chose to focus on is the underwear advertisement in the upper right hand corner.

“Motorbike Rides” by Igor Ovsyannykov is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)
Public Domain Dedication

Where is the underwear advertisement? With a quick snip and a focus on the undergarments dangling from a tree branch among the power lines, we end up with a completely different story that we were initially given.

“Undies” by Christopher Stevenson is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)
Public Domain Dedication

If you crop an image from an image, does it still have a thousand words? In this case, I’d say yes. By cropping the underwear and using grid-lines (on Pixlr.com) to put it in the upper third of the image, we are given millions of possible stories about the underwear, as opposed to the story of the man.

February 1, 2022 by Student Posts 3

The Gaze

Photo by Tom Hills on Unsplash
“The Gaze” by Angela Wylie under a CC0 license

I was drawn to this image of a Boxer in the forest because I thought the setting was peaceful and contemplative. (I also have an affinity for floppy-eared Boxers because we have had several in the family.) Although the original image is impactful – the lighting focuses on the dog and the darker edges give good contrast and a sense of the space around the dog – I felt like it could benefit from some improvements. In the cropped version, I decentered the dog and placed more focus on him rather than the scene around him. It made sense to place him in the left lower quadrant to bring attention to the direction of his gaze. This placement also removed much of the foreground, which simplified the image and brought the dog closer. Although much of the forest is removed, one still gets a sense of the setting.

February 1, 2022 by Spring 2022 Student Posts 2

Sunset Road

Mirrored Sunset by halfrain is licensed under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This picture shows that the photographer is driving in the car with the sunset behind them. It tells the audience that they are driving away from the sunset but still found it worthy to take a picture. Taking the picture in the mirror of the car frames the sunset in an interesting way.

Sunset Road by Emily Madril is licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-NY-SA 2.0

I cropped the picture this way because it tells a completely different story than the original. With this crop, the audience doesn’t have any context as to who took the picture, allowing for more interpretation. I also think it puts the focal point more on the actual sunset and less on the mirror of the car while still being able to tell that the photographer is close to the road.

February 1, 2022 by Student Posts 2

Looking in the eyes of Love

“Apple of my Eye” by Channetta Stafford is Copyright 2022″
“Apple of my Eye” by Channetta Stafford is Copyright 2022″

The top picture is a photo I captured of my son Elijah on portrait mode on my iPhone. He is enjoying tummy time and just really grasping the concept of holding his head up. Because the photo was taken on the bed, it had a lot of extra things on the sides and showed the wrinkles in the cover. I couldn’t really see his face very well so I wanted to fix that as well. Now I’m biased but I think he has the most gorgeous eyes ever and looking at the photo I knew I wanted to zoom in on his face and create some depth there.
With my cropped photo at the bottom, I used the rule of thirds and placed his face at the left intersection. I also used the vignette feature on the iPhone to darken the edges of the photo. to me the dark edges brings my eyes to the center of the photo. I also changed the filter and applied the vivid cool filter on the photo which gives it almost a blue overtone and dims down the light in the photo creating a more softer photo.

February 1, 2022 by Spring 2022 2

Sky High Castle

Swabian Castle by David Kracht is licensed under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Sky High Castle by Austin Dudley is licensed under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

German castles are some of the most unique structures in the world. The ability to carve them into the side of a mountain or bring materials up to a remote mountain peak long before paved roads is certainly impressive. This photo is one example of the engineering feat. Nothing is wrong with the original as I believe the photographer was trying to capture the natural beauty the castle is surrounded by along with demonstrating the shear size of the structure. However, this photo is a lot to process with much detail everywhere. The main structure is centered in the middle of the frame with nothing specific focused on the one third. Also, there is a tourist on the left side of the frame which slightly takes away from the all natural feel.

In my crop, I decided to focus in on the details of the main structure, specifically the high contrast, tall, white lookout tower. This allowed my eyes to easily focus on something in the frame and see closer details of all the other structures. To crop this photo, I used the one third rule emphasizing my focal point on the white tower. This uncenters the photo and also simplifies some of the background as my focus was the tower and not the whole castle. Though you lose the mountain top feel, you can more easily see the large door protecting the castle on the bridge along with the ability to raise that bridge for protection. The ability to view these smaller details was the result of a tighter crop and high resolution photo.

February 1, 2022 by Spring 2022 Student Posts 3

Different Views

“family photo preparations” by Ronny. is licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Using Adobe Photoshop, I cropped the photo in order to alter its perspective. Pictures have the ability to tell stories in many different ways. The picture I selected is a great example of how this works. In the original picture, we can observe a large family posing for a picture. However, while some seem interested, others appear distracted.

“Different views” by Amaka is licensed under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

By using the rule of thirds, I cropped most of the people out of this picture, leaving only two people, one of whom is staring into space and the other amused by what is happening in the background. We are left wondering what the ladies are looking at. They are each staring at something different. This is funny because people could actually use the image as a meme.

February 1, 2022 by Spring 2022 Student Posts 2

My Princess Anna !!

“Dressed up as Anna” by Annie Thomas is licensed under © “All Rights Reserved 2021”

In this picture is my daughter dressed up as “Princess Anna from Frozen” during Halloween last year. Everyone knows toddlers are one of the toughest to photograph. One needs a whole of patience to capture a good picture and this is one of those many photos. Although it was her second Halloween, it was the very first time she was about to go for a “Trick or Treat”. She was so excited that she kept moving here and there, and never stayed in a place. So it was hard to set a frame to capture her in her Halloween costume. I decided to shoot her in burst mode and did not worry about the framing of the shot with the plan of editing it later.

“My princess Anna” by Annie Thomas is licensed under © “All Rights Reserved 2022”

Here is the edited version of the photograph I captured last year. I removed the unwanted details in the picture such as the pathway and the vehicles parked. I followed the rule of thirds to make the composition more interesting. The original picture was shot in iPhone’s Portrait mode in Natural light. During the editing process, I switched to Studio light so that the face is brightly lit and increased the exposure of the picture. Finally, I adjusted the depth of the photo to blur the less important details in the background and emphasize the focus on my daughter.

February 1, 2022 by Student Posts 2

Looking Eye to Eye

“Looking Eye to Eye” by Keith Bennett is licensed under © “All Rights Reserved 2020”

I was at the Jacksonville Zoo in 2020 and came across this elephant and I was standing in this cave section but the Elephant appeared to be so much closer than it appeared. The elephant stopped walking dead in its tracks and was just looking at me while I looked at it. I’m not sure what it was thinking but I was in pure amazement. The funny thing is as it approached me I never heard it coming towards me. How could something so big have such a light step is what I asked myself.

“Looking Eye to Eye” by Keith Bennett is licensed under © “All Rights Reserved 2022”

I cropped the photo this way because the elephant in the first picture was so much closer and bigger than the photo captures. Everything around me did not even matter to me in the moment. All I saw was the elephant and that it was looking or what appeared to be looking directly at me. The first/original picture was beautiful to me but it just didn’t capture the spacial appearance to what it felt like in real life. I felt like a few more feet and I could have reached out and touched it. This elephant must have been extremely used to humans to allow us to get this close to each other.

February 1, 2022 by Student Posts 1

Then it became two plants

“Three Indoor Plants” by Cynthia Bermeo © “All Rights Reserved 2022”

I chose my newest indoor plants in selecting an image for this week’s project. These plants are placed next to my WFM desk. In the original photo (featured above), there are many vivid colors/background noise behind the plants between the sky, outside trees, and windows. I wanted to create a more focused and new narrative by eliminating the plant closest to the viewer. Using the rule of thirds and my grid line, the new image is now centered with the most significant plant located in the top-left grid and the succulent situated at the bottom right of the grid. This creates more focus and light for the two plants and brings the plants closer to the viewer than before. It also enriches the main plant’s color than before. I also like that the plants are neatly lined up and centered in the original. The cropped photo centered the two plants while also cutting off a chunk of the main plant, almost like getting a hair cut! The cropped image simplifies the background more than the original.

And just like that, then it became two plants.

“Two Indoor Plants” by Cynthia Bermeo © “All Rights Reserved 2022”
January 31, 2022 by Spring 2022 Student Posts 2