Assignment 2: Elements of Design

Introduction

The brief for this assignment was to shoot a series of 10-15 thematically based images incorporating elements of image design.  For reasons of convenience and personal interest, I chose to shoot city scenes in Satwa, a residential area for South Asian and Philippine laborers.  The neighborhood is sandwiched between two tonier areas of town, Jumeirah Beach and Sheikh Zayed Road.

I spent three days shooting at different times, including late morning, mid-afternoon, and twilight.  In the Part Two course notes, author Michael Freeman suggests shooting (or processing) in black-and-white in order that color not distract from the elements to be practiced.  As I followed this suggestion with the exercises, I thought it best to complete the assignment as I began.  

All images were shot in auto mode on a Nikon D5100 with a Nikkor 18-55mm.  Post-processing was done in Lightroom.

Exercise 13: Positioning a Point

"The point," Michael Freeman writes, "is the most fundamental design element.  In a photograph  for a subject to qualify as a point it has to be small in the frame, and contrast, in some way, with its surroundings.  The most obvious kind of scene in which you can find and use a single point is where the setting, or background, is plain and even, and from which you are at sufficient distance for an object to occupy just a fraction of the space."

This exercise required taking three photos demonstrating points in three classes of position:  center, off-center, close to the edge.