PROJECT #5 - Composition - Serenity

Serenity
Composition Project

I spent the weekend working (and camping) at the New York Capital District Renaissance Festival. The festival was held on a farm, and thus the camping situation was on those grounds. I was surrounded with awesome sunrises and sunsets, animals, and rustic barns. In front of where I slept was Rosie, their longhaired steer.  I found her and her enclosure to be so beautiful. Plus, in the morning the sky behind her was amazing.

CAMERA SETTINGS

WB: Shade

Aperture: f18

Shutter Speed: 1/80

ISO: 160

This picture was taken at 5:45am and the sun had just risen behind me. The mood is light, and just serene. 

In Photoshop: 

The original image was very dark, so the first thing I did was to increase the exposure by +1.5 and the gamma correction by +1.0.  I then adjusted the curves of the image to a loose “s” type curve.  I balanced the colors so that the clouds stood out. I had to use some clone stamping, and patch tools to take care of some glaring highlights, and odd The last thing I did was isolate Rosie, and made her slightly brighter and more vibrant. I did this so that she stood out from the brown dirt and barn that was above and below her.

Compositional Elements: 

Since this is a composition project, I tried to use a few compositional elements. I made sure to use the rule of thirds, while positioning Rosie. I think the barn adds a fair amount of texture, as does the depth in the clouds. And even though you can’t see her eyes, I am using the compositional element of dominant eye. She was completely posing for my camera.

Final Thoughts

I believe that the strongest part of this image is Miss Rosie. I truly feel that she is the undeniable focus of this image.  The weakest part I think might be my cropping. I kept going back and forth about the feeding trough to the left of Rosie. I left it in because I felt it set the scene appropriately. I found this assignment to be my most successful yet. I shot a few of these in Manual, and a few in Aperture mode.  I found the images that were taken with Aperture “A” mode to be more visually appealing.  However, the others were still considerably better than images I had taken prior to this class.  Something I learned about during this assignment was about moving subjects. I had to be very patient with Rosie, and had to come back a few times in order to achieve a group of images that I thought would work for this project.