Author: eklastic

Zu alt, um nur zu spielen. Zu jung, um ohne Wunsch zu sein.

Sandwiches cut diagonally just taste better.

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“Diagonal lines” – #8 from Cee’s Compose Yourself. One can write essays on diagonal lines, but the quintessential is,, : they make a photograph less boring.  Here I have experimented with cropping and angling the shot more.

Running up a bridge – in pretty red dresses.

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I didn’t need to angle this goose, it swam into my view in a perfect diagonal. Since I was standing practiacally on top of her/him this worked out quite well, and definitely less boring than just a straight horizontal swim.

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A spot of outdoor bowling.  The diagonal of the bowler conveys the action of the moment, her face does the rest.

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The diagonal here dominates the shot as basically the whole head of the animal is in a diagonal, the grass stalks points towards the focal point of the photo, the horses eye.

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The drama in this photo comes, of course, from the woman’s face.  But the two diagonals (the arm, and from her middle to her nose) make this shot more dramatic.

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A bench on skis … if I there was any snow it might just slide off the picture.

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A dramatic sunrise in the alps – with the closer mountain ridge just blocking the sun.

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #8 Diagonal Lines

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Higher and higher

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“Vertical lines” – #7 from Cee’s Compose Yourself. I thought photographs for this challenge might be easy to find in my “archives” but … not so much.

This face of a building is interesting but I needed to crop it to get rid of the cars driving in front of it.  Keeping the same dimensions as the original,the windows to the right and left are distracting. I have the same problem with many photos of similar buildings (usually in fairly narrow streets) but this style fascinates me, nevertheless, it is typical for inner city buildings in the west of Germany, dating from around 1900.

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This strange sculpture of two naked children was difficult to photograph as there was no suitable background on any side (cheap grocery stores etc., all in this not very attractive architectural style).  The tree trunk in front of it doesn’t help either but it strengthens the vertical line.

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Street lamps are usually thin and pointing upwards,

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so are church spires.

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This picture of this flaming orange tulip works in landscape format because of the close-up.

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But even though the background is more cluttered in this portrait shot, I think the picture works better that way..

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After having snapped the first shot of my husband walking between these houses in Sunderland, UK, I tried to align the lamps so that only the front one showed (husband plodding along unawares). No question which is the better photo, is it?

This a man-made attraction is highest cold-water geysir in the world.  The Andernach geysir shoots water up to 60 metres high at regular interval during summer.  It’s situated on a peninsula and ships bring about 300 tourists at a time, they watch the eruption and go back. In the first shot it looks pretty unspectacular, the vertical line isn’t strong and it basically just shows people milling around a fountain. D’oh.  The second shot is still nothing spectacular.

In the third shot – again I switched to portrait format to show off the fountain – the viewer joins the crowd in watching the fountain go up, enhanced by many of the onlookers pointing their own cameras upwards.

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I prefer the close up of the erupting geysir itself, though, with nothing distracting from the water.

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #7 Vertical Lines

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More than horizontal lines?

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“Horizontal lines and horizon” – the ultimate travel theme, isn’t it?

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Being (sometimes) quite contrary, I looked for horizontal lines closer to home.  In details,

and in views.

Water is the element that lends itself most to horizontal lines

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no matter where, no matter what season.

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But the ultimate horizon shouldn’t be absent in a horizontal theme.

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #6 Horizontal Lines and Horizon

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How many roads

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“Leading lines” – #5 in Cee’s challenge which is really a class which so much to learn!

This shot would have probably been better without the pole in the middle but I was trapped behind windows in an airport when I took it.

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The obvious choice, a path, a wall, a vanishing point. This photo was taken at the German national garden show in Brandenburg an der Havel, at the wall encircling the old church district.

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Agriculture tends to thrive on lines.

So thus architecture.

I used the Roker Beach lighthouse before but how could I not?

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Completely different water, and a bridge rather than a pier.  That’s the Moseltalbrücke  which at its highest point is 218m high.

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And finally, a somewhat quirky office building in the town of Heimsberg in North-Rhine Westphalia.

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #5 Leading Lines

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Next to nothing or very little

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“Simplicity” – void space – for Cee’s Compose Yourself photo challenge.

Hanging in space – literally.  But with safety net.

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Kreuzspinne

Even the head is submerged in void space.

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And just a simple flower.

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Cropped and uncropped:

 

And finally, in my opionion the best shot of the lot.  Coloured and black&white:

 

As much as I like the delicate yellow, I think I prefer the white tulip, though.

Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #4 Simplicity

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Plastic, wool, and feathers

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“Always take more than one photo” – the reason being that a little shift in position, a different angle, a different background can change a bad photo to an mediocre one, a mediocre one to a good on.e

There is this farm where you can buy milk directly from the producer and as advertisements they put these plastic cows in front of the barn. It was snowing when I passed them and I snapped a few photos. The first one is awkward because the cow looks in the wrong direction, her head ultimately looking small in comparison to the body.  The roofs peaking over the bank are in the wrong position. In the second picture this is even worse making the photo very cluttered, just as in the third shot where the background just disturbs the figure of the cow in the front.  Getting close and shooting the black and white cow from below shows a portrait, it shows off the cow best but as a drawback the photo looses a lot of information.

The following shots are pretty obvious: the first one is too cluttered and getting close is the answer but I also captured the little wooly sheep from the top thus showing off his face mach better.

Last not least a series of Abigail, the goose.  While all the portraits are showing off different details my favourite is the larger photo because of the angle of the head.

 

Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge: Week #3 Always Take more than One Photo

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The good, the beard and the ugly

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The next topic was: What all well-composed shots have in common.  So here are few examples of not-so-great and some better photographs.

There is quite a lot wrong with the first shot starting with the direct approach of the goose towards the camera and the funny way the second one stands behind.  In the second shot the white goose shows off her (his?) beautiful neck-line to perfection and the Egyptian goose almost fades in the background.  Almost, I dare say the photograph would have been better with just the white goose.

More geese.  The mistake in the first one is obvious, daddy goose is swimming out of the picture but I managed to capture the family in the next one.

Even better was this one because I went down to their level.

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Enough with the birds – here I was fascinated with the beard of this guy.  In the first photo the half of the face distracts from the beard which looks so much better against the uni-coloured background in any case.

And then there is this foursome. The two shots on top don’t work particularly well.  In the first the two guys are not even looking at the gnarled tree. The second one is not too great either, the lady on the left with the pink jacket is too prominent and distracting from the focus of the picture.  The composition works better in the two shots in the bottom row. Everybody looks at the tree, the purple t-shirt guy is pointing towards it.  And in the last shot, he bends over the tree, his body language expresses interest and therefore inspires interest in the others (and the viewer).

 

Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge: Week #2 What All Well-Composed Photos have in Common

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