Practicing on a beautiful day

In my photo class we have been talking about the elements of composition and things that make a photograph interesting. For our next assignment we are taking about light and dark or chiaroscuro, shapes, colors and lines and points. It was such a beautiful day yesterday I went out and took some photographs. Here are some of my favorites

Contrast and Icicles

For our photo class this week, we had to look at different kinds of light and contrast. Here are a few of my favorites. I took a whole bunch more but can't post them all. And I threw a few of icicles in just for fun 

Loved how the light (around dusk)  made the snow look pink 

Another dusk picture -- loved how the sun sunset was so high in the sky 

its all about the shape and texture

again all the different shapes

loved the contrast of black and white and the shape within the shape 

this was from one of the library windows looking at the roof  when we had all the snow on Thursday 

 one of the lights in the library courtyar -- love how the light is yellow and reflects on the icicles

love the rough and smooth spots on the same tree

another one where I loved the shape and the fact that you can't see the stairs with all the snow 

this is a bush right outside my door 

another from the same bush

this is hanging off the edge of our porch roof 

 the angle made it look darker than it is but I love the way it turned out 

a vent in the road before it was completely filled with snow 

Light and shadow at sunset

One of my favorite things to photograph is light and shadow. I took these photos out through the 5th floor window after 5 pm on Monday night. The sky was absolutely beautiful. 

I love how the light beams just travel up from the clouds

I purposely underexposed this one to get a silhouette effect and loved what it did to the clouds above

this is what the sky looked like right at the beginning -- loved the pink and the way the color just spread across the sky 

and another shot -- really loved how thick the clouds look in this one 

again loved the way the sky seemed almost misty with the texture of the clouds

Lines, Cropping, Frames within the frame

In my photography class we have been talking a lot about composing photos to make them interesting to the viewer. We have been talking about how using things like lines, shapes, color, cropping and a frame with in the frame can make someone look at your photos longer.

Yesterday morning I went out in the snow and played around with a few things.  Here are some of the photos I took.

Lines and color: I Love the contrast of red, green and white and was trying to capture the ice on everything

I tried to use an angle on the this to lead the eye across the photo

The red lines in this reminded me of a ski slope or a roller coaster and I love the green in the background which to me adds contrast 

I loved the different textures and lines in this one. This was shot from the 5th floor window  looking out across the roof . I love how the lines in the sky light frame lead you to the windows behind them

And my favorite example of using line and color. I was focusing on the icicles but loved the different textures of the bricks and then also the circles and colored lines in the pillar

Cropping: We have also been talking about how cropping whether it is with the camera or can change the focus and add interest to your photo.

In the pictures of the snowman below,  I took the shot because I thought it was funny seeing the snowman getting buried in the snow. In the first one I find the blue door behind it to be a bit distracting so I zoomed in or cropped the scene to get the second one which brings the focus more to the snowman

  In these two pictures of the glove on the pole, I took the shot because I found it funny.  In the first one you can tell it is a glove lost by a wall on a snowy day. I cropped it vertically in the second one to bring the focus of the picture more on the glove than on the scene as a whole

Frame within a frame:  Another technique that a lot of photographers use to add interest to photos is using a frame around the subject. It can be natural from trees or shapes or it can be landscape. I used he shapes of the buildings to add the frames in these

For the photo above, I used not only the frame of the window but also the shape of the pillars and the walkway as my natural frames. If you notice its not quite right because the person is standing just to the right of center but I still thought it was a cool shot. The other person was also taking a photo of the scene

For this last photo, my focus was the lion paws, but there is so much interesting architecture around there that I had to use it. The shapes and the frame of created by the pillars lead your eye to the lamp and trees that are behind them and help to add a lot of depth to the photo.