johnrochaphoto.net

Blue Shutters White Wall on Thassos

Blue Shutters on a White Wall on Thassos is a picture with a strong design element – perhaps a simple picture.

Of course.  It’s possible to say a lot  about windows – verging on the pretentious-  openings to the soul and so on.

One thing that is clear to me is that over the years I have taken a large number of pictures with windows and shutters so there is some fascination for me.

There’s also a difference now that I’ve gone digital in that I often take pictures of windows and shutters in notebook style with the view of using them as design elements in other pictures that I might compose later.

Blue Shutters White Wall in Thassos – Photo Facts.

Thassos is a Northern Island of Greece famous for its greenery.

From the photographic point of view, the daylight is clear and bright with little pollution – obviously this leads to high contrast.

Lighting is so important in photography that it can make all the difference between a good and a bad photo.

Sometimes there are suggested rules – for example many photographers consider that lighting for outdoor photography is best in the early morning and evening and that midday is a sort of photographic no persons land.

This is often true but there are a couple of caveats:

Sometimes it’s impossible to choose the timing – if you want to photograph the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace then you can’t choose the time and this goes for lots of event and festival photography.

Another reason applies here – where your subject matter is vertical.

When the sun is high in the sky this is the time it provides shadows and emphasizes textures on walls and steep mountainsides and becomes the lighting of choice.

For this picture of blue shutters I was looking for the harsh lighting to give some 3 dimensionality to the subject.

I was struck by the repetition of shadows which gave some more detail and pattern to the white wall.

I shot from a position which would give some key stoning to the shutters and an angle to the top of the wall to provide some dynamism in the composition.

This is more or less a monochrome picture not black and white but blue and white. I think another colour would not have been so effective – blue shutters are more effective here than red, green or some other colour.

I shot the picture hand held with a crop sensor Canon camera.

The bright light meant I could choose a low ISO and a fast shutter speed to eliminate camera shake.

This picture of Blue Shutters on a White Wall on Thassos  comes from my gallery Thassos the Green Island.

Ice Cream Deckchair in Torquay

Deckchairs are a feature of the English seaside.

But that doesn’t automatically make them iconic.

I was looking for an image which would sum up the seaside but clearly would not identify the locale in the way of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Ice Cream Deckchair Photo Facts.

Of course it’s a very simple picture but simple pictures still need some planning.

The first point was the concept. How to show the seaside without the sea and the sand.

And then not just any deckchair would do.

I don’t know when the technology for printing bright patterns on deckchairs came in and I don’t know how colour fast it could be.

The deckchairs of my youth were patterned with faded stripes.

I started by looking for the perfect deckchair.

There were groups of chairs with bold patterns and I took some group shots.

Finally I decided on a tight crop leaving out the wooden frame and legs and concentrating on the pattern.

As the subject is reasonably flat, there are few depth of field problems but this is a shot that depends on overall sharpness so I stopped down to make sure and also to choose an aperture of optimum quality.

As always the lighting was crucial.

The weather in England is changeable even in summer.

I wanted bright but diffused light.

I waited until there was some cloud cover to get the effect I wanted.

Then it was just a question of composing tightly and taking care to hold my Canon EOS Mark 11 steady.

I used my standard Tamron SP 28-75mm zoom – but if I had planned more carefully I probably would have used my 50mm prime.

This picture of an Ice Cream Deckchair  comes from my gallery Images of England.