Project 52 - Week 3: Ask Better Questions

This week's project assignment still has an introspective feel.  Looking at the same images I used last week, I needed to ask a series of questions presented by the author of our guide.  Since I think it would be cumbersome to look at every photo I shared last week, I am going to select one--the photo of our horse Emmett grazing in a field--and ask the questions I need to focus on of that photo.  I think this will be a good learning experience because I do have other iterations of that photo, and why I settled on the one I did as THE photo will be a good discussion.

Here are the questions I need to ask:

1. what thought or feeling am I trying to express?
2. what role does color play?
3. what would this scene look like with a tighter lens?
4. what is it about this specific moment that made me choose it instead of taking the photo a moment sooner or later?
5. do my chosen technical (camera) settings help me tell the story in the way they are supposed to?
6. what can I use to diminish the "unnecessary" in the photo without diminishing the "necessary"?
7. can a shift in my position or change in my lens, make elements in the photo relate to each other better?
8. where are the lines in the photo and would a change in framing (vertical or horizontal) make it stronger?
9. could I change the lines to better direct the eye?
10. what is the light doing?
11. is there depth in the image and could there be more or would it benefit from less?
12. are there repeated elements in the scene that provide a visual echo or rhythm to the photo?
    

                                                                                             (Courtesy of "The Visual Toolbox" ~David Duchemin)

A good place to start this discussion would be taking a peek at one of the photos I did on the same day in the same field.

The thing that caught my eye on this day, besides, of course, the horses grazing quietly, was the sky.  It was late October and the sky was a mass of blue and large, puffy clouds.  It was late afternoon.  I realized that if I walked down field, I would be below the horses and could capture that sky as their backdrop.  The problem was, I was also going to capture quite a bit of the other background things, such as the barn, fence lines, and loads of yellowish/green grass clumps.

Here's the out of camera shot and the edited version side-by-side.

You can see I've brightened the image by adding color and warmth, but I was not happy with the look of the barn or the fence line to the right in the photo.  If the barn was not there, the image might have had promise for me.  I did not want to make the horses move to different spots because I wanted to capture them grazing quietly, and if I started to move them, chances are all heck would break loose and suddenly they might not look so serene.

Emmett happened to be a bit further from this horse.  See that tree to the left?  Well watch what happens to it in this image of Emmett.

Yep.  Emmett is now growing that tree right out of his butt.  Since the message I was trying to convey did not have anything to do with butt-tree-growing-horses, this image was not going to work for me either.  Not even cropped.

In the cropped version, I've now lost my anchor tree to the left the sky is brought closer (not what I am looking for) and Emmett is still growing a butt tree.

So, even though I did not know it, I was applying some of the principles of this week's lesson to my thought process.  What thought or feeling am I trying to express?  One of serenity, calmness, the beauty of nature and animals together.  That was always my intent.

What role did color play?  The colors of the sky grabbed my attention that day.  The warmth of the sun was an important feature of this session in the field.  Although I had thought about a tighter format, what I also wanted to convey was the expanse covered by the sky, the field, and the environment in general, and then bring that all down to one horse (which just happened to be our horse on that day).

Ultimately, below then, is the photo that says what I hoped to say on this day.  Emmett very cooperatively moved a bit to his right on his own, and I moved myself around to capture a different exposure.  He framed himself nicely between the two trees, there is a good fence line showing, and the sky, while a little changed, is still the expansive backdrop, this time with the sun showcasing Emmett while he grazes.

Take some time to read through the questions again and then go over this photo once more.  Do you think I asked enough of these questions?

My new photo for this week is below.  We had a bit of snow (just a little) this past week and some pretty frigid temps.  Lilah, who normally loves snow, could not get over how cold it was.  When she thinks it's too cold to be outside, she sits in a pretty pose in the middle of the yard just waiting for me to say "IN."  Cycle that it is, this is just what I wait for to say it.  Do you think I asked the right questions in making this image?

For more studies in asking better questions, the blog circle will start this week with Ipswich, Queensland Pet Photographer, Jodie Pholi Images.