EX78 Seeing and composing the highlights

weekly exercises

7 Aug

We did an earlier exercise where we worked on adding white paper to our photographic prints. This is a very pertinent exercise, and for those of you new to my weekly exercises it is well worth revisiting.

EX45 Paper

This weeks exercise will focus on composing the highlights.

You can see the highlights more clearly by squinting your eyes and really seeing the scene before you frame up your camera well before you pick up your camera.

Try it right now. Squint your eyes until the colours are almost gone and look at the tonal relationships of the scene in front of you.

In this weeks presentation on composition I talked about the importance of composing these highlights and any whites you may include in your photograph.

This weeks exercise is relatively simple.

Photograph with particular regard to the highlights, whites and bright areas in your photographs. Look for:

balance
tension
intent
relationship to subject
attention

Consider how these bright spots in your photographs draws the viewers eyes around the photograph.

Post three photographs that you take this week. Ones that you have given extra attention to the highlights and whites. Concentrate on making sure these highlights help the viewer and your photograph.

Lets see what you can do?

Post your photographs in the Forum here.

If you do some with lots of white paper from EX 45 Paper, then you can add them to this post here.

We will be discussing these photographs next Friday in our weekly zoom meeting.