Assignment 1-- Objects as Subjects

I start this photography module with knowing nothing about DSLR, and any other professional knowledge. Do this first assignment is the first time I touched a SLR and took photos without doing anything professionally.

To quote from the lecturer, “Photography can serve simply as a visual book – a straight forward record of events, people, and places. It can also treat the subject itself as a mean to an end – a source of colors, shapes, and forms (visual qualities) from which an image can be created.” So the objective for this very first assignment is to apply visual elements on ordinary objects.

I have been really enjoying editing images in Photoshop, so to learn how to archive certain effects using camera is very exciting for me.
We required taking totally five photos with following visual qualities:

1. Line

This is a tree house near the place I used to live in. I was dreaming of a tree house since I watched some American drama and saw kids have a tree house when I was very young. Anyway, I thought this could be a good form of lines. I took a lot of photos of the tree house in different angles. I thought the ones with some blue sky background would be prettier. However, according to the assignment request, the lines should be the dominant element. So, eventually I choose this one.

2. Shape

I heard the teacher said shadow could be a great element of shapes. So I was walking around and taking photos of all kinds of shadow. All of the sudden, around 6pm, I looked out my window; I saw the perfect shadow of balconies of one building on another. However, the feedback I got wasn’t as great as I thought; people said I should shoot the neat shadow. But it’s only gonna appear on sunny days, around 6 to 7pm… good luck to me…..

3. Pattern

I don’t know why I choose this one for Pattern. My friend thinks it’s interesting. However, it’s not pattern --- the feedback I got…. Actually I get some other photos for pattern. I just couldn’t decide which one to choose…

4. Form

Form-this is the hardest one in this assignment. Form should be less color, 3D, single light source… I really don’t know what to take for form. So I took the hands of a friend. I didn’t realize we don’t allow any manipulation on the photos, not even make it black and white, so I was not allowed to use this one… other than that, this one is too flat to be a form….

5. Texture

Texture, sounds like an easy one, but after the tutorial, I found out a lot of people found very interesting subjects… I would think about something much more interesting to shoot at!