Photo Diary: January 9-15, 2024
We were assigned to take one picture a day for a week focusing on compositional techniques and the overall quality of the images. These following photos are my interoperation of this assignment.
Day 1: Tuesday, January 9, 2024
"Circuits"
The story behind this photo is I had been playing a game on my TV, and my little sister had been whining to play for a while. I was about to go off and do some homework, so I handed her the remote, and instead of grabbing it, the remote landed on the floor. It smashed into tiny pieces revealing the remote's motherboard. I have always found motherboards very interesting, so instead of doing my homework, I spent the next half hour photographing this.
Compositional elements used are filling the frame, depth of field, and the golden ratio. The motherboard is the entire frame with no other subjects. There is a distinct foreground, middle ground, and background in a smooth gradient, and the most focused parts of the motherboard happen to fall nicely in the golden ratio.
Day 2: Wednesday, January 10, 2024
"Blinding Lights"
I absolutely adore my cats. They are the best ever, and I wouldn't trade anything for them. I find that cats in general have beautiful eyes, and when I normally photograph them I try and center the image around that. This time around, I noticed that their whiskers looked liked wisps, or long hairs that you normally would see older people rock; I centered the photograph more so around that instead of the usual eyes.
Compositional elements used are leading lines and the golden ratio. The light stick going across the frame is a diagonal leading line, which usually indicates energy; ironic in this case, as my cat looks very sleepy. The golden ratio is seen starting on the left side of the photo and circling around to end in my cats face.
Day 3: Thursday, January 11, 2024
"Screaming To The Heavens"
This is my second adored cat. She tends to yawn quite a bit, so I decided to attempt taking a picture of her mid-yawn. It was a bit difficult, because cats yawn a lot faster than one might think, cats yawn sporadically, and I was trying to hold a light and a camera at the same time. I also wanted to highlight the whiskers here too.
Compositional elements used are texture and the rule of thirds. You can see the different texture of the cat: the tongue, teeth, top of the mouth, and her fur underneath her jaw. Rule of thirds is used with the cat being uncentered in the photo.
Day 4: Friday, January 12, 2024
"The Eggoning"
This was a lighting exercise in one of my classes. The objective was to portray an emotion based on lighting. I always find it hilarious when objects are lighted very dramatically for no apparent reason, therefore I decided to included this picture as it makes me chuckle.
Compositional elements used are lighting, rule of thirds, leading, and a monochromatic color scheme. The lighting is intentionally very dramatic and gives the image good depth, as well as implements the rule of thirds between the egg and shadow. The shadow also acts as a leading line that guides the eye to the egg. The monochromatic color scheme is only green being in the photo, which was not on purpose. The egg reflected its colors onto the ground, which I found really interesting.
Day 5: Saturday, January 13, 2024
"Needle Outside The Haystack"
On Saturdays I work at a quilting store that does in-house sewing machine repairs. Quite a few times, in the work room, I've seen disassembled sewing machines. Seeing all the internal parts is quite cool to me, as it's interesting to see how the individual parts work as a unit. I've been planning on photographing one of them, and the perfect opportunity arose for this assignment.
Compositional elements used are leading lines and rule of thirds. The leading line is seen as how the sewing machine needle is coming out from the left side and pointing to the feed dogs. The rule of thirds is seen with the needle side and feed dogs.
Day 6: Sunday, January 14, 2024
"Breakfast For Dinner"
This photo came to fruition, because my eye was intrigued on how the ketchup looked so glossy with the overhead lights. I decided to photograph the sandwich and plate as if it was its own little floating ecosystem.
Compositional elements used are depth of field, and golden ratio. Depth of field is seen with the distinct foreground of the plate, middle ground of the sandwich, and background blur. Golden ratio is seen from the middle of the sandwich, circling outwards.
Day 7: Monday, January 15, 2024
"Festive Bird"
I've seen this bird on my way home from school quite a bit. It appeared on this stump a few days after some brutal winds knocked down the previous tree. I've noticed that the bird looks almost angelic with the sunset coming down, so I decided to capture the bird and the sun. I got lens flare than I hoped, but I'm still quite pleased with the final product.
Compositional elements used are rule of thirds and depth of field. The rule of thirds can be seen between the bird and the little tree it's perched next to. The depth of field can be seen with the distinct foreground of the tree stump, middle ground of the bird and fake tree, and the background of the neighbourhood and sunset.
Some Final Words
During this project I had difficulty getting up and doing anything. From the midterm break, I had become very lazy boned, and I just found it difficult to actually get up to do anything. I was able to overcome this with anxiety of failing and was able to come around to producing photos I'm happy with. A personal achievement from this assignment is I was able to actual take decent photos everyday. I'm really amazed at how I was able to get the creativity to complete each photo.
