Digital Photography and Imaging | Week 2

30/8/2021 / Week 2
Shofwa Alyadiena / 0350019

Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

 Lecture 

For our second class, Mr. Fauzi reviewed all our blogs and our first exercise. We discussed about the files some students weren't getting and how to prevent it from happening again. Fortunately, all of that was solved and we were able to resume to our class. He informed us that we're allowed to attach his lecture presentations here if we wanted to. The main topic for our lecture this week was composition and framing. There are multiple reasons why composition and framing is important in design. 

Basic composition include focal points, scale and hierarchy, balancing elements, and use of white spaces. Focal points are where viewers would naturally settle on your design. On average, we see the center of the piece first, or if there is a complete human figure, the eyes first. We can change or emphasize the focal points by adding colors or enlarging the image to where we want the viewers to look at first. 

Like all of the basics, scaling is another method of controlling what the viewers see. Adding images with larger sizes would catch the audience's eyes and that would be what they see first. It's closely related to balancing the elements. Balancing the elements is necessary especially if we're going for an asymmetrical design. Bigger pictures add an imaginary 'weight' to a design, so we have to balance it out if we want it to look pleasing to the eyes. 

White spaces are also used to accentuate the main focus of our design, but unlike the rest, how it works isnt by adding on to the main image. Instead, it takes the rest of the design farther away, or even completely removing them so there would be really only one thing to see, which is the main design. This method is mostly used by artworks that are minimalistic, helping the viewers and design itself to breathe. 

There are more advanced composition techniques such as the 'rule of thirds' or 'the golden ratio'. The rule of thirds are used to create a more natural design that doesn't feel awkward. How it works is that you place the main piece of your picture at one-third of the image from the right, left, top or bottom. These areas of an image are represented by the red circles in the picture below.

Fig. 1.1 Rule of Thirds grid

The golden ratio is one of the more known compositions. Same as the rule of thirds, the golden ratio helps to achieve a natural design. Many things in nature move in a spiral, the way you would imagine anything following the golden ratio. Hence, using this in design is one of the best ways to create natural movement.

Fig. 1.2 The Golden Ratio

Fig. 1.3 Golden Ratio in Nature

Mr. Fauzi ended our session by giving and explaining us this week's task. We ended our session early to get a head start.

 Task 1-E1: Physical Collaging 

The next exercise we're doing is physical collaging, as most of us didn't have access to Adobe Softwares yet. We aren't required to use a certain resource- although magazines are recommended. Luckily for me, there was no problem as my parents had heaps of old magazines they never read and never will use. However, very little of it was in english so I didn't have a lot of text bubbles to add in to the collage.

I prepared the tools I needed, though many of them are definitely not for professional use. As a replacement for the cutting board, i used my old clipboard. To cut the magazine pages I always had a lot of cutter refills, and yet I don't have a proper cutter handle so i had to be extra careful handling the collages. 

Fig. 3.1 A Collection of Old Fashion Magazines (28/8/2021)

These old magazines have been collecting dust under the coffee table. They don't have a lot of variety in content, but they provide a lot of human figures for the collage. 

Fig. 3.2 Pages I've Ripped Off (28/8/2021)

I believed this task was a good start for experimenting, so I didn't give too much thought in what I wanted to use and cut out. Whenever I saw something that caught my eye, I would rip the whole page off immediately and think about what to use from that page later. 

Fig. 3.3 Cutouts and Extra Colored Paper (28/8/2021)

Fig. 3.4 Cutouts (28/8/2021)

After I cut out the things I wanted to, I was left with this pile of options. As tempting as it it, I had to stop myself from opening more magazines since I know I wouldn't be using all of them. I was quite happy with the amount of vibrant colors i was able to get from the magazines I collected. The next thing I needed to do now was placing them together to see what I find fitting.

º PRE-COMPOSITION #1

Fig. 3.5 An Attempt at Applying The Rule of Thirds (30/8/2021)

Fig. 3.6 Second Version of First Attempt (30/8/2021)

Originally I had an image of a fern placed behind the others, but some of my friends and I agreed it was eye-catching and drives the attention away from the human figure even with bright contrasting color. I still liked it though, so I can’t decide which is better. I was trying to express how I feel people thought of me once I decided to take design school.

º PRE-COMPOSITION #2

Fig. 3.7 Two-shot Attempt (30/8/2021)

I wanted to make something with more vibrant colors, without completely getting rid of all the materials from the first attempt. I only wanted to make one text bubble visible at first glance, so I placed the texts used from the first pre-composition in a darker spot. The text below says “Different is everything”, and using contrast in color alongside the different kinds of fruits sort of emphasizes that meaning.

º PRE-COMPOSITION #3

Fig. 3.8 Last Attempt (30/8/2021)

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure where I was going with this one. I felt like making a collage that had a bit more weight in it, sort of symbolizing how too many things in our life are focused on being measured through numbers, especially regarding money. I’m not sure I really got the point across.