The last three days! Finally!! This challenge is long past but in the middle of posting all the photos I ended up getting a visitor from British Columbia. The grandson made an appearance at my front door on Mother’s Day! Best present ever.
He’s here for an undetermined amount of time while all this COVID-19 stay at home stuff continues. His mommy, my big girl, has been working from home half time (full time was a bit difficult with the child) for the past 2 months or so but when she and her company decided to get her back on full hours Nana became a part of the solution. I’m happy and getting used to being a full time caregiver to a little one but it is exhausting. Things get better every day though.
So without further excuses for not getting at this sooner, here we go, the last 9 images:
Day 9
Route 66 Horizon Placement: on the first day of the Great Escape from California to Alberta Brian brought me to Route 66! Now believe it or not he says he did not know it was on my bucket list, he did not know that Route 66 was an iconic route and the Main Street of America or that Nat King Cole made it famous in his song, Get Your Kicks on Route 66. Well, I took this image an put the horizon line way at the top because what is important here? The road of course. BTW, it was closed and we had to pick another route up to Utah and our destination for the day.Layering: Ah, out of California and into Utah and her gorgeous red rock. We had planned on spending an extra week in Utah and all her beautiful National Parks on our way home (another thing on my bucket list and, just so you know, all of my bucket list involves photo worthy places and adventures).
Day 10
Framing I do wish I could remember where this was taken… either the Louvre or possibly a monastery or cathedral in Spain. Framing is a tool that adds depth to a photograph. It typically involves a foreground, middle-ground and background layer bringing the whole composition together to tell a comprehensive story.Juxtaposition is a photo that has side-by-side meanings. It has a subconscious effect that is contrasting or opposing. I thought this photo demonstrated it well, at least for me. Whenever I see these SLOW signs what always first runs through my brain is, ‘why do they always pick on the slow adults… or children… or vehicles?’Shapes is an element in all art, they are two-dimensional, flat and either geometric or organic. I think the challenge for this assignment was to demonstrate shape as the actual subject while brining interest into it with the use of other compositional elements.
Day 11
Movement and Positioning When you add positioning to a movement shot you actually tell a story of what is happening in an image. This is a kid doing jump tricks on his motorcycle at the Sturgis Motorcycle Burnout in Sicamous each July. Imagine if I had taken this picture as a closeup. You definitely would not get the same feeling of height, daring and skill that this kid employs in his sport. Positioning the subject in the frame is the key to telling the story.Spot of Colour I love this picture. It was taken against an old winery barn in Ontario’s PEC wine country. E &C and I were out on a prowl before Thanksgiving dinner a few years back and found this lovely old winery. The colours were gorgeous and this barn’s side was so rustic it that it made a perfect foil to the dying grape leaves.Using Lens Focal Length This sort of illustrates unintentional use of focal length of a wide angle lens. The wide angle gives the two camigos in the foreground a bit of distortion whereas the other two camigos look more normal (and they actually were more normal, LOL).
And finally, that is it for the Compositional Skills Challenge. That was such a lengthy post. I hope you didn’t get too bored with all the Composition explanations.
Of course, these skills are rarely used as a single element in any art. Positioning, colour, choice of perspective, depth, lines, framing, etc are all brought together in good and great art. But this was an important and useful challenge for those in our group who participated.
We often submitted very different types of photos as we interpreted the skills differently and we were, for the most part, looking through our archives to see what we had to fit the skill rather than going out to capture it. Remember, this was done during COVID-19 isolating so trying to get 3 skills done a day in 11 days would have been too much of a challenge as we were separating them out as specific and individual compositional skills.
