Photography basics - a walk I did today

There's a group in Manchester (UK) that does photography walks on various themes. Todays one, while purporting to be 'architecture', ended up as touching on the 7 formal elements of photography
- Line
- Shape & Form
- Pattern
- Tone
- Colour
- Texture
- Space

It was fascinating as I'd never really considered it like that. But it all made perfect sense and I picked up a lot of knowledge. If you want to know more, here's a brief intro: focus.picfair.com/articles/7-formal-elements-photography

And here's a few (6) pictures where I tried out some of the elements.

A 3D effect from water droplets on the top of a post.

Leading lines to the man

Shapes. We were asked to find as many different shapes as possible and show them off. I didn't win, but there's loads in these two pictures.

We were asked to find patterns. I liked this one in some stone pavings.

Finally - negative space. I saw this picture and it just seemed perfect. Lady on the left taking a picture. a lot of space and anyone around walking away from her, thus making more space. And finally (which I didn't see till afterwords), the shop sign says "Spaces". Perfect.

Feel free to comment.

Alan

Alan,

I like your first picture; but I find the aims of the rest rather artificial and over-intellectualised. The aim of improving one’s technique is surely to develop an instinct for a good photo, rather than the ability to tick boxes, which this activity can easily lead to. I see a lot of criticism of photos based on such box-ticking exercises, and they dont increase my interest in a photo.

😀

David

David,

The photos were just to reflect the type of stuff we were trying out. They were not, in any way, meant to be "good" photos. However, the last one was one that I tried out for "Negative Space" which seemed to actually end up as a reasonable street photo.

I agree with your comments.

Alan

Exactly. It made me look at scenes differently.

Alan