Vertical Lines in Venice

Week 3 - Discussion Post (also on FB)




While I certainly do not consider myself a photographer, I do love to take photos and have a vast archive of snaps. Contrary to the advice of Ken Rockwell (from one of our readings), I keep EVERYTHING. He is right, though, when he says, “Most of what I shoot is…” (Rockwell, 2008: 13), well, let’s just say, not-so compelling. Despite encouragement to “create a new photo from scratch,” I really wanted to go through my collection and examine sets of photos I’ve taken that have become progressively artful. I managed to find a set I thought demonstrated the process fairly well. The set I chose was taken during a trip to Venice, Italy. From there, I proceeded to edit the final image using iPhoto.

After reading through the articles and reflecting on my approach to photography, I realized that I tend to follow the Rule of Thirds fairly religiously, although, I usually only attend to the vertical divisions. With the camera I have, I always center the subject to get it in focus, and then I shift to the right or left to offset the main subject or some other element of the photo. In this photo, I wanted the sun in the background to be offset, a decision I made consciously. As it happens, though, the horizontal thirds seem to play a bigger role, something I noticed in the editing phase. Initially, the horizontal divisions included sky (top), background buildings (middle), and gondolas (bottom). In an effort to place greater emphasis on the gondolas, I cropped the photo, reducing the amount of sky and elongating the look of the photo. Now, the main subject (the gondolas) takes up the bottom two thirds of the photo. Lines are also an important consideration. I tend to be drawn to diagonal lines, which, in this case, were found in how the gondolas and posts were lined up. In addition, the pier / dock create diagonal lines in the mid-ground of the photo. This element of the photo also creates somewhat of a natural frame for the gondolas, something else I purposefully seek out when I look through the lens. In this case, though, that might be one element of the photo that is either distracting or adds clutter. If I was to take this photo again, I might try to take it from an angle that minimizes the presence of the pier / dock. One other element of the photo that I worked hard to incorporate was the lightning. The very first photo taken at this venue was with my back to the light, which illuminated the gondolas and boosted the overall color of the photo. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that the light was low in the sky, though, so I turned around and shot into the sun. This created a silhouetting effect and also allowed me to capture the sun and its reflection off the water. This detail factored strongly in to my editing decisions.

In the editing phase, the first thing I did was apply the black and white effect to the photo. I didn’t like this, so I reverted back to the original photo and moved on to cropping (as described earlier). Once cropped, I tried to apply the black and white effect again. It was a little more palatable with the cropped photo, but I wasn’t satisfied. I tried a few other effects before arriving at “antique,” which is seemingly a more-subtle version of sepia. I thought this accentuated the overall mood of the photo and the element of lighting. With a warmer look, I then began to play with the exposure and contrast levels. I thought the image was a bit dark and attempted to bring more light to it. I liked the golden tone and the way the sun’s rays became more visible and distinct, but too many details in the gondolas were illuminated, which was not what I was looking for. In the end, I reverted back to the original settings, which highlighted the warm, shadowy subjects and the silhouettes in the background.

This entire set of photos shows how the pictures changed.