P&P: Exercise 23: Selective Processing And Prominence

From the course notes:

Select one image that you have already taken for an earlier project, an image in which the issue is the visual prominence of a figure in a setting. For this exercise you will use the digital processing methods that you have available on your computer to make two new versions of this image.

In one, make the figure less prominent, so that it recedes into the setting. In the second, do the opposite, by making it stand out more. Possible selective adjustments are to brightness, contrast, even colour intensity if you are presenting a colour image.

This image was taken during a December 2014 trip to Istanbul.  The version here is how I developed and displayed it on my Flickr account.  For this exercise, I have developed two additional images.

P&P: Exercise 21: Making figures anonymous

Facing away, Small

When the place is the principal subject, but when it will look better inhabited, it is often useful

to find ways of reducing the visual attention that a person or a face tends to command.

The point here is to use people as accents, not as subjects, and thus techniques that make them less individual, and more anonymous, are appropriate.  Several techniques are suggested, including reduced size, facing away or partly hidden, blurred, or in silhouette. 

As with the previous exercises, these images were taken at Dubai Mall.  The one above depicts the shop front of a bakery and uses figures to add some visual interest.  The female foreground faces away, the make at right is small.  

P&P: Exercise 20: Busy traffic

From a single figure we move to many.  In this exercise we are to depict a space heavily trafficked, looking for possible patterns in the coming and going.

P&P: Exercise 19: A single figure small

We are asked to create an image of a large space with a tiny human figure, one that is at first glance not so easily seen.

Consider how obvious, to a viewer’s eye, the figure will be in the image. Some delayed reaction adds to the interest of looking at this kind of photograph, and there is even an element of surprise if the scale of the place (perhaps a cathedral interior) is larger than expected.