My task here was to use the techniques I have learnt in this past section on lines, points, shapes etc, and use them along with a theme to show my understanding in how they work in the design of a photograph. My chosen theme is:
The raw materials of food.
For this theme, I decided to take my shots in a series that shows how food is grown and picked, through to it being purchased, prepared and cooked, using elements of design to emphasise the meaning of each shot and to guide you through the process.
This first shot was taken at a local ‘pick your own’ farm, and I felt it made a good opening to my series to show that I would be looking at how the food is grown and picked naturally. At first I composed the shot based around the fact that the three people in the field made good points in the composition together, making them seem lonely in such a fast foreground, and making a point that not so many people go and pick out their own food any more, which in my view is such a shame as fresh, locally grown produce should be celebrated more often. I also noted that the addition of the poly tunnel behind them made a lovely horizontal line across the frame, giving the picture some balance, and also creating a slow sweeping movement from one side to the other, emphasising the size of the field, which contributes to making the people in the shot feel ever more desolate.
Again this next shot of the tractor in the field was composed to show one point dominating the composition. For the same reasons I chose to use the people in the field to show farming has become less important to society, I made the tractor the sole point in the frame. I decided to place it low in the frame as I wanted the least ground as possible in the shot to contribute to the idea that farming and the land is not such a prominent issue. I also like the fact that the tractor is isolated with no driver or other workers in the field to imply its importance of use, so being the only point in the frame makes it seem like it used to be important but is now forgotten.
This image shows a combination of design elements with the posts of the vineyard creating a lovely rhythm of movement across the frame, and the curve in the road in front of it helps you to travel with this rhythm. Both these elements together give a greater sense of movement to the piece, implying you could almost get into the frame and walk among them if you wanted. The curve of the road also helps to soften the rhythm, otherwise it may have felt too rigid in its movement causing the photo to loose the sense of nature being a continuous motion.
Again this photograph uses rhythm predominantly to create movement within the frame to show the continuous length of poly tunnels at the farm. This rhythm combined with tight framing makes it hard to see if there is a beginning or an end to the tunnels, and the distinct arch shapes that run through out the shot move the eye along nicely to imply that the there is a lot of work being done here and an almost endless supply of food being grown.
Vertical lines play the leading role in this photo to exaggerate the length of the path and the rows of strawberry plants either side. it creates a feeling of moving into depth into the image. Also there are two other key elements in this shot that help the emphasis on its depth. The first are the vertical uprights of the legs of the troughs which creates a dramatic rhythm to carry you up the main vertical lines created by the shadow in the middle of the path and the white sides of the troughs. The second is that an implied triangle has been made by the trough sides almost coming to a point in the very background of the frame. This creates the most depth by bringing the eye to at apex or point of the triangle, like a road disappearing into the horizon it makes you imagine that it can carry on way beyond the edges of the frame.
I tried to frame the bars and columns of the green house as level as I could, so that I could show the deliberate rectangles in the windows. I wanted to show these shapes to portray the idea that the green house had a solid strength that encloses the foods being grown within it. Rectangles are usually the most enclosing and precise of shapes and so I wanted to make the image feel that great care and protection was being put into the growth of our food.
This shot I was hoping would have shown more of a diagonal movement, I think I could have done better with its framing as it is not as dramatic as I would have liked. That said, I’m pleased with my use of aperture to focus on a section of the tomato plants, so that the wall in the background is out of focus and doesn't detract from the line of plants. I wanted to make more of a diagonal of this shot to show movement down the row of tomato plants. Although I didn't achieve this as much as I thought, I shot the picture at a slightly off camber angle, which helps in giving an off balanced feeling like a diagonal. I actually really like this particular image for aesthetical reasons, but I don't feel my use of composition added any meaning to it, only the image content added to the series of photographs.
Diagonals again, but this time with the rhythm of the bottles on the shelf makes a more fluid movement down this isle of fresh produce in the farm shop. There is also rhythm in the sections of vegetables below the shelf as a secondary element. It helps in showing the wide selection the shop had to offer and leads you through the items.
I felt the strong verticals of the slates of wood of the box, and the verticals of the rhubarb made the image appear quite strong, showing that we can produce strong health produce from our British farmers. Also the lighting on the image that casts the strong shadows and tones of light and dark makes the image very dramatic.
The image of the strawberry punnets was my first attempt at creating a pattern within an image. I thought there was nothing nicer than British strawberries to make a pattern of to show summer was on its way. Unfortunately the light in the farm shop was not as bright as I needed, and my flash just made my photos look too dark, so I used a large aperture to let more light in, and this ultimately lost the focus in the front of the image. The main focus now lies on the strawberries at the back of the shot and so the element of being a pattern is somewhat lost because of the unfocused areas in the foreground, although the regular shapes of the punnet cases does help to imply this would have been a pattern.
I like this image because the rhythm and solidly implied horizontal and vertical lines in the frame makes the loaves of bread feel almost like a brickwork pattern. It makes me feel like I would really like to buy one of the loaves as they are in a good precise order, implying they are of high quality and that the bakers have taken time and precision over them.
I also like this image because of the impact the eye line from the baker has. It is a very active image because although the baker is the central feature, you follow his gaze and want to know what he is look at and thinking of. His eye line draws you down to the bread on his table, and the you come to realise there is other activity happening in the background in the form of another woman serving on her stall. It is a very though provoking image as it has different elements and subjects happening at once, but you are always brought back to the powerful presence of the baker in the foreground doing his days work.
For this image I used an implied triangle to give the scales some ‘weight’ as it were. Triangles can really balance an image if their base is placed at the bottom of the frame, which is what I did with this photo of the scales. Because the larger end, or heavier end of the triangle is placed at the bottom, and the apex at the top of the frame, it makes the scales in the image feel as though they are being weighted down by this imaginary triangle, giving it a dynamic sense of something being weighed without anything in the picture to actually describe this visually.
This was my second, much more successful attempt and creating a pattern in an image. I chopped some mushrooms that I had previously bought from the farm in preparation for making soup, and arranged them into a pattern of slices. I tried shooting them from different angles but this was the best position for the frame as it showed the most pattern in the shapes of the mushrooms, with movement being carried from the foreground to background, and the tight framing helps to emphasise that there is a pattern happening, otherwise it would just be a photograph of some chopped mushrooms in the middle of the frame.
In this shot, the implied triangle trough the knife and the lines of the kitchen work top, with its apex at the bottom of the frame, really creates a tension in the image of the knife being a very sharp, downwards force on the onion. It emphasises the whole point of the onion being chopped and makes the implement of the knife very dramatic. The unusual vertical framing also makes the image more active in its movement towards the bottom of the triangle.
I was asked to produce one shot where I had purposefully arranged some points to create a shape in the frame. I have created a sort of triangle with the three chopped onions, but I think I have created more of a relationship between the subjects which tells more of a story, and helps to carry my series of photos along. I placed the knife at the edge of the image and pointed it towards the onions so that it created a line to follow, almost like an arrow to get the viewer to follow the knife through to the onions. The onions I placed in a triangle so that the viewer would then circle the eye around those first, before moving on again to the pile of chopped onions next to it. I wanted to create a sort of miniature story within the frame that told how the onions came to be chopped, by following the hidden prompts.
This one was a very vague idea of the vertical line from the vegetable stock being poured form the jug into the pan, it shoes the long flowing movement of the liquid. It doesn't really help describe the image very much, but it gave me a chance to practice using shutter speeds on the flowing liquid, and also added to the series of events in my photographs.
Again I played with shutter speeds while the soup was being stirred to see if I could capture the curves in the liquid. I tried quite a few attempts before I found a speed that wasn’t so fast it completely froze the movement, but was just right to capture the graceful curves and swirls as the soup was being stirred. It makes the image feel active as though the movement in the pan is still happening.
I shot this photo as I was trying to use the lines of the cooker to create a perspective on the pan that wasn’t really there. The implied triangle that the shape of the cooker makes, and the diagonals of the bars on the cooker top create a perspective of looking down into the pan, even though I was not actually stood above it. The help to draw your attention to the contents of the pan, as if you could reach into the frame and smell the steam coming off the top of it.
This is the last photograph of the series which I think really sums them all up, of my dad eating the soup I had cooked. It uses an implied triangle from his face to his two hands to draw your attention down to the end product of all of the hard work put in by the farmers, pickers, bakers and the people who buy this produce to cook good wholesome meals from. I am very interested in where my food comes from and I’m happy with how my series of photos takes the viewer on a journey that shows how you can go from an industry that seems like it is loosing interest, to produce that is continuously growing through the seasons and then being purchased and made into food that brings happiness and health to its consumers.
I would like to think that more people will take British farming seriously, and that its end result is actually more worth while than people think.
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