Exercise 3.3 – What matters is to look

The brief for this exercise is to find a good viewpoint where you can see a wide view or panorama. Look at the things closes to you in the foreground. Then pay attention to the details in the middle distance and then the things towards the horizon. Try to see the whole visual field together, all in movement. When you have it, raise the camera and release the shutter.

Add a picture and a description of the process to your learning log.

Lockdown. Taking photographs when you are not allowed to go far from your home without good reason is a challenge, especially when you are trying to make the most of what you can see. Still, it is good practice and forces you to be creative.

The view from the front of my house is limited. The view from the back, while still limited, does provide for a bit more variety.

The image above is I took while sitting on the bed and staring out the window. There is not much to see, mainly the sky and a tree. As I took pictures out the window, I decided to limit myself to what I could see while sitting down and without adjusting the position of the window blinds.

By putting these limits on myself, it was almost as if I were bedridden, or at least restricted to how far I could move. Most of the images were not very interesting. However, the one above I thought was better because of the positioning of the pot on the windowsill and the tree. Bonsai?

The sequence of images above was taken over several days. Rather than using a high viewpoint I opted for a lower one while taking a break from working at home and sitting on the doorstep, getting a bit of fresh air and sunlight.

The first of the four images I chose because of the movement of the movement. Previous exercises during the part of the course have explored movement and so I thought that this was, even if it was unintentional, appropriate.

The others were selected because of they show how what you see can change just by slight changes in where you are focussing your attention.

The three images above were taken while hanging out of an upstairs window at the rear of my home. The view at the rear of the property is a bit wider than the front and so there is more variety to explore.

I particularly chose the last image because of the way that the overhead wire and lamp post connect in horizontal and vertical directions, almost creating a frame within a frame. The image below is the result of cropping the image using the wire and lamp post.