Photo Assignment June/July 2009

[JCagle]

The first photo assignment will be for the months of June and July since June is half over. I also thought it would give us a good chance to get things going and develop a feel for how this goes. After a few months if the participation is not good we will let this go to the wayside.

These first few months we will work on some basic styles of shots other than the standard 3/4 wedgie. If you go to any album of a railfan you will see tons and tons of these shots. It is the standard catch all type of shot. After looking through albums and albums of them you can get quite numb. The easiest way to become a better photographer is to learn to shoot different types of shots. After all we want people to be interested enough to take a look at our shots.

The first assignment topic is going to be the use of a full frame. Fill the frame with something of interest. Something to balance out the entirety of the frame and not just have a train on the tracks smack dab in the middle of the frame with dead space around it. Many people do things like shoot through or over fences, or use overhanging tree branches to fill the top of the frame, but not totally obscure the sky. The essential part of this idea is to fill up the frame with interesting objects.

After all it's not just about the train. A picture with just a train in it could be turned into the sentence "A train came through". It is still a sentence, but it doesn't tell you much. We want the sentence to read something more like A train passed this picturesque fence line on a farm in rural Virginia on a bright sunny day as I lay in the shade from an old oak tree.

Let's see what you can come up with to fill the frame.

[JCagle]

Since the outage I thought I would post a reminder about this new assignment. If this is something you guys are interested in we will keep it going, and if not then we will let it go by the wayside.  Anyone have any questions, comments, or concerns feel free to contact me.

[Whitethorne]

My video camera and 810 at Christiansburg

[JCagle]

I can see what you were going for with trying to put something in the foreground and the background. When I look at it I have to wonder what the subject of the photo is. Is it the blurry train in the background, or the silhouette of the video camera?  A few of the common ways people fill the frame is by using a technique called framing.

Framing is a way to take a wide shot without having dead space.  One common example of this is the use of a fence along the bottom of the frame which is a little more interesting than grass. This is more for broadside shots. People also use things like bridges and tree limbs. It also requires balance in the depth of field to keep everything in focus. When my archive system comes back up at home I'll dig and find an example of what I'm talking about.

[Whitethorne]

Ok thanks!