DPP: Exercise 3: Histogram

The brief here is to shoot and present a series of photos in which we display and comment on histograms.  The exercise is intended not "as an in-depth analysis" but to familiarize oneself with "the most basic characteristics of an image."  In preparation I did a bit of research and reading on histograms, which I report on in a separate post here.

The exercise calls specifically for low, average, and high contrast images, each shot at normal exposure, plus one stop up and down for each, for a total of nine exposures.  I decided to shoot these while also shooting for Exercise 2, about which you can read more here.

We are asked to comment on the relationship between the exposure and the data in the histogram, noting especially highlight and shadow clipping.  I used exposure compensation to meet the requirement for multiple exposures (the RX100 does not feature auto-bracketing) which, as you can see, resulted in differing shutter speeds. I may wish to experiment with actual f-stops and see if it produces different results.  My guess is that it will not.

What is a histogram?

I reproduce here the opening paragraphs of Yannis Ioannidis's 2003 The History of Histograms (abridged) for useful information on etymology, early usage, and definition.  The full article is available as a PDF download, but outside the paragraphs here may be of little interest to photographers or a nonspecialist audience.

The word `histogram' is of Greek origin, as it is a composite of the words `isto-s'  (= `mast', also means `web' but this is not relevant to this discussion) and `gram-ma'  (= `something written'). Hence, it should be interpreted as a form of writing consisting of `masts', i.e., long shapes vertically standing, or something similar. It is not, however, a word that was originally used in the Greek language.  The term `histogram' was coined by the famous statistician Karl Pearson to refer to a "common form of graphical representation". In the Oxford English Dictionary quotes from "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" Series A, Vol. CLXXXVI, (1895) p. 399, it is mentioned that "[The word `histogram' was] introduced by the writer in his lectures on statistics as a term for a common form of graphical representation, i.e., by columns marking as areas the frequency corresponding to the range of their base."  Stigler identifies the lectures as the 1892 lectures on the geometry of statistics [69].

DPP: Exercise 2: Your Own Workflow (time unlimited)

Exercise 2 requires developing a workflow for a project unlimited in time. Exercise 3 requires nine specific images intended for examining histograms.  I plan to complete these two exercises in one shoot.

I have since May been photographing within a 2-block / 3-station radius of my home on Sheikh Zayed Road.  The intention has been to capture everyday objects in an everyday documentary / vernacular style. This ongoing project includes over 375 flagged images among a total collection of over 700.  Most have been collected in the area immediately around my residence.  Areas farther away are less well represented.  It is in one of these I shot for my last exercise, and it is to this area I will return for this. The subject will be the Dubai Trade Centre Hotel Apartments.  I have bicycled around the apartments and seen what might make some interesting images.