Читать книгу Collins Complete Photography Projects - John Garrett - Страница 51

Establishing a strong composition can be a progressive thing; I often take several pictures where the elements are present but they are just not working together to make a really good landscape.

I know it is there somewhere and I just keep moving and looking until it all comes together for me. This takes perseverance and concentration, and often that last special element to complete the composition has to be waited for as it might be a cloud or a shaft of light. Sometimes you just have to be very patient.

For this assignment, take a black and white photograph. Find a landscape that has one strong feature, such as a great sky, then move around looking for a strong shape to put in the foreground to balance the composition. Conversely, find a beautiful foreground subject then explore different angles until you find a background that is sympathetic to it.

THE START POINT

I first spotted this mountain with the summit framed in a circular-shaped cloud – very promising, but not really enough. For your own project, you can choose any feature that appeals to you and then build on that. JG

FINDING A SECOND ELEMENT

About 100m (110yd) to my left I found the church spire, also an interesting element. I then tried to get myself into a position where the two elements came together. You may strike lucky and find a suitable element in just the right place, but it’s more likely you’ll have to move your position and rethink the angle from which you will shoot your main feature. JG

THE FINAL COMPOSITION

I was anxious to get the shot before the light and the cloud changed, but I was aware that I was looking at a series of triangles and shifted my position until they all made a pattern that I found pleasing. My final decision was to wait for the white cloud to move behind the church spire to isolate the cross. I set the camera to black and white and used a polarizing filter to darken the blue sky.

This composition is perfect for me – in fact it’s one of my favourite landscapes. The cloud looks as if it has been painted in, rather like the backdrop in some old movie. Even in a beautiful place like Chamonix in the French Alps you have to put the work in, so keep on looking for strong patterns and juxtapositions of shapes until you are satisfied that you have made the photograph as interesting as you can. 1/1500 second at f8, 100mm, 400 ISO. JG

WEATHERED BARN

I love the old barns in Pennsylvania, and here the angle of the light brought out the texture in the weathered walls. At first I tried to avoid placing the telegraph pole in front of the building, but that meant leaving out the corn silo which is so much a part of buildings such as this. I shot in colour but checked it out in monochrome as I went along, keeping the colour and the black and white options open. If the colours in reality aren’t particularly exciting, bear the possibility of black and white in mind – but remember that you will need graduations of tone to make an interesting photograph. While you may still have the mental image of, say, a grey roof and mid-brown wooden walls when you look at the shot in black and white, that may look tonally very flat rendered in monochrome. Try to banish colour from your mind while you judge the potential for black and white. JG

TRYING A DIFFERENT ANGLE

I moved to my left to show the silo, which meant the pole was now in front of the building. I knew that I could remove it later, but decided that in fact the pole and the wires worked in the composition and were an important part of the character of the building. Elements that might easily be judged unsightly sometimes speak volumes about the history and purpose of a building. 1/1000 second at f8, 30mm, 320 ISO. JG

THE FINAL SHOT

In the end I preferred the black and white version as it looks more in keeping with the period of the barn. The slightly wide-angle lens had converged the verticals slightly so I corrected that in Lightroom. Don’t just settle for your first visualization but check out the situation and look for a different angle; the character of a building will reveal itself to you if you search for it. JG