Project 52 - Week 9: Learn To Isolate

I always joke with people that as I get older and older the more I lean toward becoming a hermit.  A hermit with pets.  Or maybe, that is, a crazy cat lady?  Whatever it is, I'm almost there.  But this is not about that kind of isolation.

"Isolation is all about simplifying......so the most important elements have the best shot at pulling your eye." (David Duchemin - The Visual Toolbox).

Whether it's through the type of lens you use, your proximity to the subject, your point/angle of view, how much or how little light you use on your subject, isolating takes the viewer immediately to the piece of the photo equation you want them to see.

Look at this photo of Luke, below, and what is the first thing  you see?

I grabbed this photo of Luke while he was "napping" on the couch. I used an 85mm 1.4 manual focus lens, and moved in very close to Luke.  It was late in the evening, so I used a single 26" octabox with off camera flash just behind and above me.  While Luke thought all of this was very suspicious, he thankfully stayed tucked into his I-really-am-trying-to-sleep-here position.

Hopefully, you are drawn to Luke's eye and his ears.  Both tell the story here.  I cropped this photo down so you would focus in on Luke's head.  With too many other elements, the story might get lost. So a very simple image.  Not many colors, not many items.  Personally, these are my favorite types of images.

Cemetery Tree - Photo Credit to Michael Carey

I recently purchased this print from a fellow photographer friend.  He is very good at isolation.  The print, as you see, is of a large tree on the edge of a cemetery.  There are muted white clouds on a blue sky just behind the tree, and through the clouds is one single line of blue sky weaving its way like a ladder to heaven.  So many things could have gone wrong when he took this photo.  But all the planets aligned and he chose a point of view/angle and isolation perspective that makes this image a very powerful one.

Even though I have minimized the image here, you can see how your eye is drawn to the story.  To me, this image is perfect.

One of the other techniques I like to use to isolate an image is to tone down the background, and use darkness and light to move the eye to the point of the photo.  If you think of every image as having to tell a story, then I think isolation becomes easier.

There IS a time and place for clutter in an image if that is the story you need to tell, but learning to isolate is a technique and tool that will make your work better and more interesting.

Below is another image I took as part of this week's chapter lesson.

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I took this image at the same time I photographed the image of Luke.  I used the same lens and changed the position of the octabox, placing it to the left of Lilah and behind my right shoulder, pushing it further away from her.  There is a bit of ambient light to Lilah's right (my left), which I have kept in the photo, but for the most part this image, except for its subject, is dark, isolating Lilah to the premier spot for your eye to focus.

Now it's time for you to travel around the blog circle and see how others interpreted our assignment this week.  Remember, if at first you don't succeed, come back later and try again.  Some of our bloggers are in different parts of the world, so time zones are not the same, and a link glitch will most certainly be fixed later in the day.

Start with Jodie Pholi Images, and work your way back here to complete the blog circle.  Enjoy!