I realize now that I should have been dating these journal entries. It’s April 11th, 2020, and the prior Covid Photo Journal posts have been between March 30th and today. I usually post these a day or two after I actually take the photos, so grain of salt for all the upcoming dates.
My next batch of assignments is a study in photo elements. There are surely more than just these, but this is a start. I’ll bullet all of the elements I’ll try and cover and then jump right into it.
- Shape
- Form
- Texture
- Tone
- Line
- Pattern
- Color
I came back to these modern golden arches for my shape assignment. I tried to emphasize the gentle arc to draw the eye through the rounded gateway. It’s a shame that the gate leads you into the corner of a dull brown building, but I learned about how arches, probably natural and manmade, can be used to draw attention to whatever is on the opposite end. There were two versions of this image that I had a hard time choosing between. One was more symmetrical and ignored the hardware on the top of the swingset. I decided to go with this skewed version that highlighted the hardware because of the context. The swings are down due to the pandemic. This is like a modern ring-around-the-rosise.
My second choice for shape was more difficult for me, but I liked the shape of the silhouette of the trees here. It reminded me of a Bob Ross composition. I also liked the shape of the sloping hill. It seems to give the landscape wave, it’s like an earthly ocean swell that I can imagine moving from left to right through this image. It gives the otherwise underexposed image a nice natural energy that livens it up a bit. The shape of the clouds is neat too.
