I had some doubts about choosing a subject for this project and finally, I selected the flowers and plants group. After having finished the project I have to tell that it was surprisingly fascinating the new world I've discovered.
So now let's explain the final compositions:
- Single point dominating the composition.
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| Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/25 f/11 ISO 200. No flash, no tripod. |
I found this flower in a windy afternoon. The wind was a little obstacle to get the picture, but it didn't stop me so finally I got the shot I wanted when the wind calmed. I set the aperture to f/11 because I wanted the whole purple flower to be sharp, specially the blue and yellow parts, while I wanted its backgroung blurry to focus the attention on the flower.
Here the flower is dominating the composition because its color is contrasting with the dominant green in the scene and in my opinion, it makes the photograph so beautiful.
- Two points
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5,6 Focal length: 200 mm Exposure: 1/125 f/4,8 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
I saw a couple of plants growing in the edge of the road. I looked at them and realized that although their root was placed in the same point, one of them was riper than the other because one was completely red when the other had a gradient between green to red.
If we compare the two points in the scene (the two plants here), we can see that the left one has more contrast that the other because the right plant has some green as the background. So the main point here would be the red plant.
I chose a large aperture because I wanted to focus the attention on the two plants while I separated them from the background but I'm afraid of not having solve this problem because the camera was too close from the points.
The vertical framing and the lines drawn by their stems (also vertical) simbolize the idea of growth, which is emphasized by their colours because it means that the riper plant (the red one) has grown earlier.
- Several point in a deliberate shape
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 10 sec. f/22 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
It has been by far the most difficult exercise in this project. I think that shooting to something you find in nature is easier than creating a situation that you like to get shot. And of course, you need more time (most times, depending on what you're shooting) to think the composition and to prepare it.
What I most like about photography is when I've decided my subject and I start thinking about where to position the camera, think about if it's gonna be a low angle, high angle or eye level shot and so on. Here in this exercise the challenge was another one because first I placed the camera and chose the point of view and then started filling the frame. To be honest I didn't believe that I was able to get a great shot because I had no idea of how to begin. But when I placed the first point and then another one, and another one, my mind started viewing different shapes like triagles and curves that helped in the final composition.
- A combination of vertical and horizontal lines
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/80 f/5,6 ISO 200. No flash, no tripod. |
I was photographing a flower near this leaves when I saw it and I liked its highly saturated green colour against the stone so it got my attention very soon. The tricky part of getting the picture was that it was in the border of the river so I had to think about how I was going to place myself to get this point of view. Finally I decided to take a bird's eye shot. If there is any problem in this picture is that the foreground leaves are a distraction, but I there was nothing to do with them.
The combination of vertical and horizontal lines help to lead the eye in the right direction and make to look throught the image.
- Diagonals
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5,6 Focal length: 70 mm Exposure: 1/1250 f/4,5 ISO 200. No flash, no tripod. |
I took this shot when I was going back home after a walk. I heard some birds and looked up when I saw some branches iluminated by a warm summer light and I became a little nostalgic so I got the idea about the composition of the shot. I chose a branch to be my diagonal I placed creating a triangle with the edges of the frame to give more power to the picture.
Here the main diagonal works pretty well to draw the eye through the image. But there are also a lot of more diagonals in the picture drawn by smaller branches and leaves. They intersect with other diagonals creating a sense of action because the lines make the picture confusing.
- Curves
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm f/2,8 Exposure: 1/100 f/11 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
This is a plant's close up. I took out my camera and the tripod to the balcony and started experimenting with the macro lens. It was rainning so I wasn't very interested in taking pictures with such a gloomy environment. After a while, the sun appeared and I took this picture because I liked how the stems' "hairs" were iluminated by the sun as well as I liked its light curved shape.
The only problem is the distracting leave on the top left corner because it's not in focus altough I used a small aperture the macro lens is a little bit more difficult to work with.
- Distinct, even if irregular, shapes
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: 70-300 mm f/4-5,6 Focal length: 300 mm Exposure: 1/400 f/11 ISO 400. No flash, no tripod. |
I was photographing the daisy when I realized that it was a small insect in it, so I used the telephoto lens. Here we can see two circles: the outer circle is implied by the petals and the inner one is real (yellow).
As when using circles in a composition, they attract the whole attention, so I tried to place it in the middle to balance the composition.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6 Focal length: 48 mm Exposure: 2 sec. f/16 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
Here I used the shape of a rose in the composition. The shape creates another element in the picture for the viewer eye to look through and helps to fill the frame.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/60 f/16 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
This flower's irregular shape captured my attention as well as its saturated color. I tried to focus the whole plant while blurring the background so the shape of the flower gets sharper and draws an inverted triangle.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/125 f/11 EV-1 ISO 200. No flash, no tripod. |
I found this plant containing four flowers when I went for a walk. It was very windy that afternoon so the flowers didn't stop moving. I needed a quick shutter speed to freeze their movement as the same time I needed the flowers to be in focus. I also was afraid of the exposure because the flowers are nearly white and I didn't want to overexpose them, so I set the exposure compensation to -1.
Here the flowers draw a trapezoid and the hanging pistils are lines suggesting movement because of their direction: the upper flowers' pistils make a curve towards the right bottom flower.
- At least two kinds of implied triagles
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/500 f/5,6 EV -1 ISO 200. No flash, no used. |
I composed the image to get one flower higher than the other two, while these were at the same heigth, so the implied traingle with the appex at the top is quite obvious here.
It's another triangle in this shot just in the top. But this one is a real triangle because it's the shape of the green leaf.
If we take another look to the image, an oval can be seen also. We can see the top flower inside the oval, so it attacts the viewer's eye to it.
I've used a large aperture to separate the flowers from the background and lead the eye to them, because the contrast between the white cover and the pink flowers has a lot of power in the picture.
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Tamron 90 mm Macro f/2,8 Exposure: 1/400 f/11 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
In this picture the implied triangle is also drawn by the three flowers but I think the appex is inverted (the centre of the bottom red flower), so it would be a triangle built in perspective.
Although the dominant point is the pink flower because it is larger and the color is different from the others. Other reasons would be that it's placed following the rule of thirds and it's shape can be seen better.
I used this aperture because I wanted sharpness for the three flowers but I also wanted to separate the background and to blur it.
- Rhythm
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5,6 Focal length: 70 mm Exposure: 1/30 f/16 ISO 200. No flash, tripod used. |
I don't understand very well the difference between rhythm and pattern. Well, I know in theory that rhythm is related to movement while pattern is static but in practice I don't see much difference sometimes.
I took this picture, which I think is an example os rhythm because I think the eye moves around the picture getting a sense of depth. To get this sense of depth I used a small aperture, such as f/16, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/30. This was a little bit dangerous speed because it was slow in my opinion, and that's why some flowers in the picture are blurry.
Now that I'm lookin at the picture, I'm asking myself why I didn't set a higher ISO to get a faster shutter speed.
- Pattern
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Camera body: Nikon d90 Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5,6 Focal length: 135 mm Exposure: 1/60 f/11 EV -1 ISO 200. No flash, no used. |
This is my example of pattern. I've chosen a repetition of different leaves which gives me a static sense. I chose a f/11 aperture to get everything in focus and I thought it was when I checked in the camera viewer but when I reached home and loaded the picture in my laptop I saw the dark green leave in the upper right side wasn't sharp enough.
