This week over at Who We Become, we continue our exercise in portraiture - this week with full body portraits. Full body portraits are personal favorites of mine because of the amount of context these shots often include. I found my fabulous subjects at a summer street fair and while they would look awesome anywhere, I like how the hustle and bustle of the environment, as well as my tight shooting quarters, are evident.
Please head over to Who We Become to see everyone's work this week!
I have to admit, I miss getting out there with my camera. These days, with a new baby and a kid on summer vacation and other things keeping us busy, I am finding it hard to shoot for myself. My goal is to make a return to street photography more of a priority in the coming months but in the meantime, I am going to cut myself some slack and try to ease back into the swing of things by focusing on my small boy/big city project instead. So, if you come across a random woman running around the streets of New York cajoling a four year old to try and look less miserable doing things he normally loves to do in exchange for some form of sugar, while also attempting not to knock the baby tied to her chest senseless with her camera...do say hello.
This week in our portraiture study, our compositions are built around half or three-quarter body shots. Unlike the traditional headshot, the partial-body composition often also includes more contextual surroundings and is a fundamental compositional basis for many classical artists. I attempted some different angles on my happy camper on his first day of summer break and found the partial-body shots angled from above (and below) to be my favorites.
Please pop over to Who We Become to see what else we all found above the belt this week.
It's a new month, which means we Photo 52.2 participants have a new topic. During June, our focus within the frame will be on compositional methods in traditional portraiture. For our first week, we are experimenting with the classic headshot. A headshot generally includes just the head and shoulders in the frame. While neither of these would work well for a business profile, they meet the "head and shoulders" criteria and are images of two (and a bit) of my very favorite heads, so I think they'll do nicely.
Continue over to Who We Become and check out the cuties and beauties featured in headshot week!
It's Photographer's Choice in our final week of color study and we are finding creative ways to put what we've learned to use. My images are not particularly colorful, but shot with our lessons in mind. The first is a nod to analogous color schemes, with hints of green and blue, and the second draws on the complementary tones of red and green.
Please head over to Who We Become and see how my fellow participants rounded out the month.
This week in our color study, we are investigating achromatic photography. An achromatic image is one that is without color. This can be a black and white image, or a color image shot composed of only greyscale tones. I attempted to find the latter. Graffiti, pavement, my favorite mug and a black granite countertop...it was fun to try and locate spots lacking in color.
Please stop by Who We Become to see everyone's interpretations - our achromatic efforts make for a harmonious collage, yet stand in stark contrast to the bright imagery posted in recent weeks.
Happy Mother's Day and welcome to week 32 of P52.2 Framed. We are in our second week of color study - this time using complimentary colors (colors across from each other on the color wheel) as the foundation of our images.
I was searching all over for useable color combinations this week and at the eleventh hour I hit upon some blue/yellow combinations. First, some bubbly at brunch and then some fun graffiti.
Please check out what the rest of the group has found this week over at our collaborative site, Who We Become!
It's a new month and spring has finally arrived for most of us. With the improving weather, we are hoping to brighten things up a bit by embarking on a color study. For our first week's assignment, we focused on creating images with analogous colors (colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel, such as the warm tones in my image) or with a monochromatic color scheme - varying tones of the same underlying color or the more traditional black and white.
I admit, this shot was not taken with our assignment in mind, but with the beautiful red and yellow flowers, her orange shirt and her gorgeous smile, I had no choice but to post this image of my dear, dear friend and fellow P52 participant, Kami Chaudhery.
Please click on over to Who We Become to see what everyone is up to as we say hello to the month of May!
It is week 30 for P52.2 Framed, and our final week on utilizing tonality as a compositional element. After three weeks of using lighting techniques to create mood, this week we turn to split tone color. Split toning adds a color tint to the highlights and/or shadows of an image, while leaving the mid-tones alone. It can be used in black and white as well as color photographs, as demonstrated below. Split tones can have a significant impact on the overall feeling of an image and is a fun, creative technique to employ once in a while.
Please head over to Who We Become to see our collective work this week - it's a fun and colorful collage!
As shot
Pink highlights, blue shadows
Standard black & white
Black & white with red highlights, green shadows
Nailing down definitions for our month of tonality has proven tricky - especially this week as we turn to mid-key. While we know it when we see it, it is a bit hard to describe. My take: a pleasing, mid-range palate that lacks the overall brightness of high key and the drama and shadows of low key but that isn't so uniform as to obscure the subject or wash out the image. I think mid-key can be gorgeous, with rich jewel tones and textures, even though I prefer them in color.
My image this week doesn't have an obvious subject, but I played around in the bright sun and liked the feel of this out of focus shot of Madison Square Park. To me, it captures the urban environment and the impression of warmer weather with colors more than form. However, my mother mentioned that she "not a fan" of blurry images so perhaps it is not for everyone. :)
Please head over to Who We Become to see everyone's work this week!
This week on P52.2 Framed, we continue to use lighting techniques to add mood to our compositions. Low key lighting emphasizes darks and shadows, giving a dramatic or contemplative feel to an image. While the technique is a favorite of mine and makes for beautiful shots, this week's exercise demonstrates how much more of an impact low key lighting can have when the mood of the subject matches the tonality of the image.
And yes, there was also a hair cut.
Please pop over to Who We Become to see everyone's work this week!
Merriam-Webster defines "composition" as "the way in which something is put together or arranged : the combination of parts or elements that make up something."
This month over at Who We Become, we are taking a step back from the more physical elements of our compositional study and focusing on other elements in the frame: creating mood. For week one, we are using high key lighting techniques to set the scene.
Examples of a high key technique can often be found in commercial work - bright images that have few mid-tones and even fewer shadows. Photographers may use this technique to create a sense of cheer or playfulness, or evoke feelings of youth. For my shots below, I think the brighter background and haziness of the light results in a dreamy effect and keeps the focus on my sweet subject enjoying a taste of Spring sunshine.
Please click over to Who We Become to see everyone's images this week - the bright palate is striking.
While I haven't made it back to the streets yet, I have made it to the playground where there are signs of Spring on the horizon. Tentative (and wet) but I have hope.
Those of us over at Who We Become are now at our halfway point in our second 52 week photography project. Please click on over to see what everyone chose during their "free" week and take a peek around. We've updated the site to include images and information on our first year's Project Light as well as our composition-focused posts from this year.
This week on P52.2, we are turning our attention to conceptual contrast. Big and small, old and new...there are some amazingly creative examples over at Who We Become. In our house, "old" and new seemed the most appropriate as we welcomed the newest member of our family. Not enough words in the world to describe how much I love these.
As March inches onwards, over at P52.2 Framed we have transitioned from featuring patterns in our compositions, to using various concepts of contrast as the underpinnings to our images. This week, we are looking at traditional contrast - light versus dark.
On a family outing to Brooklyn yesterday, I had fun searching for the right light to work with for this week's assignment.
It's a beautiful and dramatic collection of shots over on Who We Become - please click on through to check it out.
Jane's Carousel
Streets of DUMBO
Bargemusic
Moon over Brooklyn
While there is certainly something soothing about patterns, sometimes it is really the break in a pattern that catches our interest.
This week, our life involved a lot of IKEA construction, leading us all to wish for a bit of an escape, both from our home and from our pattern of doing things at the last minute...
Please head over to Who We Become to see some amazing pattern breaks my co-conspirators found this week.
This week over at Who We Become, we are beginning a new month on pattern and contrast. Our goal this week is to recognize patterns in our everyday surroundings and see how we can incorporate them into our imagery. Be sure to pop over - I have already had a preview of an incredible Senegalese zebra and spiral staircase that are incredible captures for this week's theme.
The camera was not my steady companion this week, so I found myself attempting this assignment during a little outing to the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History yesterday afternoon. I've got stronger examples in the archives, but we did manage to find some lines and circles that fit the bill. We also saw a fantastic show about Dark Matter and took a few shots while in the theater for posterity.
Solitary Man
On the Fire Escape
It's our last week on perspective and having had a gorgeous weekend here in New York, I think I finally have a little of my own. Seems as though this winter has secretly been getting me down and it felt wonderful to be outside in the sun with my camera. And, much like my attitude, our theme this week was looking up. Shooting from below is a great way to get an interesting perspective on the ordinary, or focus on the things that often go right over our heads, literally.
Below are a few of my non-kid favorites (see Friday's post if you missed out on the boy in rain boots). Then, please do head on over to Who We Become to see the full collection.
View From the Lower Level
Over at Who We Become, our look at perspective continues to feature crop ratios - this week, 1:1 - a square crop. Dynamic, inclusive and comparatively small, this is an interesting crop to work with and as I am not an Instagrammer, I have very little practice with the format. So today, I decided to break out the macro and have a little fun. Or maybe too much fun, because an entirely different set of images is being saved for another post. But for now: feathers.
In our ongoing study of perspective, this week we are focusing on aspect ratio as a compositional tool. Not every camera shoots with the same dimensions so this week we are bidding adieu to the traditional 3:2 ratio that is the default of most DSLRs and playing instead with the ratios you see on medium or large format cameras, such as 5:4, 7:6 or 16:9.
I admit, having moved this week, my time to get out and have fun with this project was curtailed by the amount of time my poor camera spent in a box. But when an opportunity arose this morning, I tried to use different aspect ratios to capture the height of the windows and the shadowy light on this snowy, cloudy day. Please head over to Who We Become to see how the rest of my talented friends approached this theme.
Over at Who We Become, we are closing out our month on specialty lenses. I have to admit, I did not get as creative as my fellow participants this week. However, I did bring out a telephoto lens for some fun in the snow - I am more of a wide angle person, so it was fun to experiment with action shots on a longer lens and be able to see the expressions on the kids' faces so clearly. This was my kiddo's first time on a sled...I'm pretty sure he liked it.
