Unusual perspectives

        I created this image over February break in Florida. I was coming home from a great dinner out with my grandparents and Mother. When we were driving over a bridge close to their house I removed my eyes from my smartphone and looked up, I saw in the cooling Floridian night that there was a light fog which made the picturesque streets and lights of the quiet town of Venice seem to glow. I persuaded the adults to let me get out and wander the streets for a few minutes. Keep in mind that this is at 10:30 at night in Florida. I had to do a lot of persuading. The resulting pictures have some halos and blurring around the lights, which I think looks very nice. To capture this photograph I did have to stand directly in the center of a road, but at 10:30 in Venice not much is going on. The Florida night was humid and mild, there was the occasional sound of a passing car or thumping of bass from a far away club. The most noticeable feeling was the emptiness, Venice felt like ghost town, which left the lights on. Almost like Yarmouth, but with more light and less snow. 

     I love photographing at night, however I never carry a tripod which always becomes an issue with long exposures such as this photo. I have become fairly good at holding perfectly still for the 10-25 second exposures required for this series. But without a tripod on 2/3 of the pictures I took on that Venice night came out non-blurry. The ones that did come out well, I really like, not many of them fit the unusual perspective requirement though, so I hope to be able to weave them into other assignments later.

Composition, Rule of Thirds

     This photo is an example of compositional strategy because it uses the rule of thirds. Because the horizon line is on the lower third dividing line of the picture. This photo also has very interesting lines in the branches of the tree. The branches and the tree are the subject and they contrast with the background to bring out the subject. The background in this photo is included because it is in focus. This shows the details in the opposite shore and the color gradient in the sunrise. The background is included by having a more open aperture. There is also a flat straight line in the horizon which promotes the feeling of peace and calmness. One thing that I could have done better in this photo is decluttering the foreground, I think that the fence takes away from the subject of the photo. However if this was cropped then I would loose the rule of thirds. 

Shapes Assignment

I took this photograph with the blue scissors as the subject because I wanted to have shapes with an interesting subject. The one pair of blue scissors I tried to get to really pop out of the picture and grab your eye as a subject. In hindsight I with I used the blue filter option on my camera to maximize this effect. The scissors are also not in the center of the frame, they are a little to the left which shows the rule of thirds. There is also diversity of color in this photo.