Thursday, March 5, 2009

Julie (54/100) - Mozart perhaps ...


Conrad was in the forecourt of Manning Bar trying to entertain his fellows on the second day of a new Semester. I WAS heading inside for my promised flash-shots but I simply could not go past the yellow tees. Anyway, I still used the flash for this one as it was quite overcast and the forecourt is in a bit of a hole. I now have two bits of bluetak on my diffuser to ensure it does not fall off when I switch from landscape to portrait!

On both Tuesday night and Wednesday I worried this image. You just have to have the guts to cut through bits of human body!! I now have a range of crops littering my folder. But shall only put up this one which is maybe half of the original.

My camera was set to P with an ISO of 400 and the AWB was Flash. The Photo-style was set to Portrait which I had preset to (5, 1, 1, 2) remembering that Peter mentioned the other day that portraits usually have less contrast and less saturation to endeavour to get close to realistic skin-tones. I wonder what the difference is between saturation and colour-tone. Also, Peter said yesterday that he tries to replicate the original size relationships - whatever that is called. I wonder why he tries to do that? I just cut away the bits that are expendable paying no heed to the shape of what I will end up with. Is there some theory to what short of shape is more pleasing to the eye?

Here is the original that I butchered:

6 comments:

Julie said...

Tarnation! My text takes up as much space as does my image. Never mind ... I earn my living with my writing!

Ann said...

I think I'd like to see the original to see what the proportions were. I have a thing about horizontals at the moment and wonder what it would be like with him at the right of frame. I know I've done it but I really hate cutting away half the photo. The bright yellow is great. I think there is definitely theory about what compositions are more pleasing to the eye, remember something about it in the 2 day course I did years ago, but I can't tell you what they are, apart from diagonals and rule of thirds but everyone's eye is different anyway so something that pleases me may not please you.

Julie said...

Darn ... don't have the original with me at work. Shall put it up this evening. Suffice to say stuff has been cut off all round, with the most being cut from in front of him ... a whole 'nother chap facing away from camera!

Ann said...

Okay, in that case ignore comment re horizontal.

bitingmidge said...

So many questions!

Firstly, I like the pic, and it seems the flash is working for you too! Remember you probably won't need a diffuser if you use it in bright sunlight though.

The proportion of the crop is just an exercise for me, much like maintaining the landscape format for this.

Most of my photo books end up based on a square format.

There is an proportion that is pleasing to the eye, and it's known as the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio which is 1:1.618 and I think I'll write a post about it!

bitingmidge said...

No need to write, there is plenty written far more eloquently than I could ever hope to achieve, one of my favourite articles in so far as it relates to photography is at the fotogenetic website.

Read and enjoy, I can show you how it works, but don't go slavishly trying to find shots that conform to Golden Mean composition just yet. Save that for another day!