A Reason to Photograph

It’s important to have a purpose to what you create, whatever the medium is. Behind every photograph is a story. The photographer had a reason for capturing that particular image. Something caught their eye or their imagination and they wanted to share this with others. Not all styles will suit every audience of course. Some photographs depict landscapes which draw the audience in, they can create a feeling of tranquillity or foreboding. The photograph below is of a sunset in South Wales. It was a peaceful evening and I wanted to share some of my emotions with others. 

Towards one of my projects, I wanted to create a piece which appears simple, but which has an element which is slightly out of place or wrong, something to make the viewer think about the photograph rather than just taking it at face value. I decided to experiment with using shutter speed to show motion in the picture.

For this image I used a shutter speed of 1/8 second and an aperture of f11. The scene creates mood through the contrast between the heavy cloud base and the tree silhouettes. I set one of the swings in motion to generate the impression that there might have been a presence in the frame seconds earlier, but whatever the presence was had now gone.

I tried the same sort of technique for my final piece which I set in a child’s bedroom, as indicated by the curtains and the toys. To highlight the motion of the rocking horse, I placed a stationary soft toy next to it. The picture was taken at dusk in the winter so the lighting was low. To emphasise the slightly uneasy feeling in the picture, I increased the ISO to 6400 to achieve a grainy effect. The high ISO compensated for the low light and lack of flash but on another image this technique might not be appropriate as the textured effect would detract from the image. The aperture was set to f4, the shutter speed was 1/4 second, and I shot the picture in monochrome. I did not use a flash so as well as using a high ISO, I also increased the exposure compensation by +5 to light the picture as far as I could without any artificial light.

If recreating a similar image, I would aim to achieve the same sort of effect. The high ISO produces a grainy texture which I find particularly effective in some black and white photography. The granularity is exaggerated as the image is reproduced in larger sizes but the essence of the picture is not compromised. I would perhaps experiment with other moving versus stationary toys to try to generate the feeling of something slightly out of place in the image.