Light and Shadow Assignment

This picture was taken in Sleepy Hollow, NY. To place more focus on the shadow of the house as the subject, I could have cropped the picture, but I thought that it would add more interest to include the house. Since the top of the house is cropped, the shadow allows the viewer to see what the house top looks like.

This picture was taken at Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home in Sleepy Hollow, NY. I like how the light was shining through the trees so that it was highlighting some of the tops of the plants while others remained in shadow.

Here is another picture which places more focus on the plants receiving the light from the sun.

I took this picture using an aperture of f/5.6 a and shutter speed of 1/40, which allowed for more focus on the subject, the leaves in the foreground. I like how the settings on the camera were able to be manipulated in this way. It allowed for more flexibility to create the image that I wanted to capture.

This picture was taken in Connecticut. I think it shows a perfect fall setting, but the photo could be improved with more focus on the horse.

Fall in New England

Here is a picture taken on October 23, 2009, of an actual pumpkin, grown in western Pennsylvania, that weighs 570 pounds. I couldn't believe how big the pumpkin was when I was up close to it. Its magnitude is obvious with the other smaller pumpkins overshadowed by it.

I like the contrast that the light creates in these two pictures taken in Connecticut of a river. There is a bridge overhead, so it was blocking some light from reaching the river and cast a shadow. I think the bottom picture shows a lot of texture to the water, so it could be argued that the bottom picture is more interesting than the top picture. The top picture, however, has a lot of texture in the rocks, which occupy half the space in the photograph. The top picture from this standpoint is successful as well.

10/19 sunny

The top photo is the original taken of the altar inside the Basilica. The picture was taken on October 19, 2009. It was a sunny day and the only light source for the picture was the light from outside shining through the stained-glass windows. There was minimal tungsten light inside the Basilica. The bottom picture was altered using Photoshop. It is much more successful than that from Oct. 18, 2009, since the walls behind the altar are less warm in tone. The colors of the walls match better to how they should be after the calibration using the highlight dropper.





calibrated

10/18 - cloudy

The top picture is of the altar in the Basilica. On October 18, 2009, it was starting to get dark outside and it also cloudy, so the light that is visible in the picture is mostly due to the lights in the Basilica, or tungsten light. The bottom picture has been altered using Photoshop using the highlight dropper in order to calibrate it. The top photo has a lot of red, yellow, and orange in the photo. The bottom photo is much improved in terms of allowing the true hues to show. However, the limitation existed in determining what white to choose to base the other colors off of due to the risk of losing too much information. More should probably be done to eliminate the yellow tone to the walls, but it would have to be done carefully so that more information in the picture is not lost.

10/19 sunny

The top picture is the original picture taken on October 19, 2009. The lighting conditions were different from the day before since it was a bright, sunny day with few clouds in the sky. The bottom picture has been calibrated using Photoshop. There is only a slight difference between the original and the calibration in the tone of the stone material of the Baslicia has less blue in it. More work would need to be done to improve the calibration, but it was rather difficult to calibrate the original photo since any true white tone that was chosen caused the picture to lose too much information. In this sense, it was advantageous to do as little as possible with the photo to alter it.

10/18 - cloudy

The picture on top is the original while the picture on the bottom has been altered using Photoshop. This picture was taken on October 18, 2009. It was a cloudy day. While some information in the photograph of the sky has been lost in the calibration, the structure of the Basilica is more true to life in its tone since the stone does not have as much of a blue tone as the original does.

These photos are the product of an experiment I tried using tungsten as the setting in the top photograph versus daylight as the setting in the bottom photograph. Tungsten does not adjust well to the light of the sun as it casts a blue haze on the photo while under the same lighting conditions daylight gives the subject more natural color tones.

Here are some photographs taken at night. I decided to desaturate the original photos to see if they would have more impact without color. I believe both have more impact desaturated. The photo with the sidewalk and benches becomes more mysterious when it is desaturated. The contrast between the highlights and midtones in the foreground and the shadown and midtones in the background is powerful in the photo of the road leading down the hill.

I was attracted by the reflection of the flower as I walked by it when it was drizzling. It would have improved the photograph if I were able to take the picture closer to the flower, but then I couldn't see the reflection.

I like the swirl effect the clouds created in this picutre leading to the Basilica. I would have liked it better if I could have been on a higher elevation when taking this picture in order to focus more attention on the clouds and the Basilica rather than on the Pryz.

Here are a couple of examples to demonstrate the different effects that a fast shutter speed and small aperture setting or a slow shutter speed and wide aperture setting can create. The picture to the right is a crisp clear image, created with a shutter speed of 1/13 and an aperture of f/5.6. The picture below is less in focus and would be reminiscent of a Monet painting, for example. That picture was taken with a shutter speed of 1/1 and an aperture of f/20. This photo also makes use of one of the rules of photography, leading lines.

Rule 1: Impact

I think this photo has impact with the contrast of dark and light. The shapes that the shadow creates also adds interest to the photo. The light emphasizes most what I wanted to emphasize in the picture, which is the statues.

Rule 2: Cropping

These photos show the range of the subject matter that can be displayed in a photograph. This photo allows for more versatility as it allows the photographer to crop it later, ridding the photo of extraneous subject matter, such as the tree in the foreground.











This photo does not allow for much versatility as it crops out all other subject matter and does not allow the photographer to put the structure of the Basilica in a time and place. This photo could have potentially even been taken on the other side of the street, not in front of McMahon hall.

This photo demonstrates a good balance of not cropping too much out of the picture, but still allows the viewer to put the subject in a time and place.

Rule 3: Biggest, Boldest, Brightest

I like these two photos contrasting each other: one has the flowers in the focus in the foreground while the other has the flowers in focus in the background. I think each demonstrates a way of the third rule.

Rule 4: KISS

I decided to manipulate the shutter speed and aperture settings to emphasize the detail of the flowers in the foreground, but still show that they are in a time and place with the other flowers in the background out of focus.

Rule 5: Rule of Thirds

This picture allows the viewer to put the subject in a time and place. Two-thirds of the photo is focused on the planter, but it is clear that some of the picture still shows the building and trees behind it.

Rule 6: Leading Lines

The leading line is the sidewalk, which allows the eye to move to the vanishing point in the picture. It is also important that the vanishing point is off-center since this adds more interest to the photo.

Rule 7: Balance

I think this picture is balanced in terms of the different textures displayed, as well as the shapes that are formed. There are three triangles and one rectangle in the middle.

This picture is balanced as there are three triangles in the picture: one formed by the tree, one formed by the flagpole, and one formed by the tip of the dome of the Baslica, all with respect to the ground.

Rule 8: Framing

I decided to use the natural frame of the outside of McMahon hall to create a frame for the Basilica. I think I would, however, incorporate more of the column on the left in order to make the picture more complete.

Rule 9: Avoid Mergers

This picture avoids mergers since the tree branches are not detracting from the subject, the dome of the Basilica. The tree branches are also dark, which allows the dome, which is off-center, to gain more importance in the photo.

This picture shows that the tree branches avoid contact with the Basilica; however, since the dome is in the center, the picture does not allow the eye to move. The subject is static.

This photo breaks the rule of avoiding mergers since the tree branches detract from the subject, which is the dome of the Basilica.

Rule 10: Room for Movement

I don't think this picture displays the rule well. There is too much empty space in terms of the blue sky.

I think this picture demonstrates the rule much better. The focal point is the Basilica. The eye then moves to the highest point of the Basilica, to the leaves on the tree, and then back down to the dome. This enables the eye to move in a circle throughout the picture.