Project 13: the golden section

After reading the text in the folder, I still had gaps in my understanding of the Golden Section and so went searching for more information. Here's a resource I found useful: Apogee Photo Mag: Creativity and the Rule of Thirds and there's a useful Photoshop script to add a layer to images with the rule of thirds or golden section: GoldenRatio.zip and in addition there are lots of sites that talk about the Fibonacci series and how that relates to it. On with the task, six pictures which fit the rule: "A simple approximation of these proportions is the Rule of Thirds, i.e. if the frame is divided both horizontally and vertically into thirds, lines such as the horizon or important focal points can be placed on or near to the intersection of these divisions to achieve a balanced composition".

Does this fit the Golden Section? The horizon is on a line and the main subject is on an intersection. So Yes.

Does this fit the Golden Section? Top to bottom I think it does may be in the horizontal plane it doesn't.

Does this fit the Golden Section? The boats are on an arc which crosses two of the four intersections. So I think this does.

Does this fit the Golden Section? The orange area fits (just about) in a large rectangle, and in the smaller, diagonally opposite rectangle is the stem, so yes.

Does this fit the Golden Section? Eyes are on the intersections, so I think it does.

Does this fit the Golden Section? The horizon is on a line.

I think these pictures look balanced from a compositional perspective.

Project 11: balance

I've been working on Balance this afternoon, here are my results:

In this shot, if you draw a line along a diagonal that runs through the knife then you have the line along which I have considered the picture. The black area on either side are the two large blocks on the see-saw and the knife sits on the centre. This shot is balanced.

In this picture of the glass, the objects considered for the purpose of balance were the glass and it's shadow. I think this shot is balanced.

This is a picture of some bark on which a sheep has caught some wool. When converting to BW I tried to ensure that there was a balance of tones. Light on the left, medium in the middle and dark on the right. I've put the light, dark and piece of wool on the see-saw. I think this shot is pretty much balanced.

The next shot is some trees at sunset (or slightly after). I considered light and dark areas, the light being the sky and the dark being the trees. (The ground was excluded since it is a dark band running from left to right and doesn't seem to impact the balance along this axis - although it does if you consider the balance vertically). As you can see from my sketch, I think the shot is balanced.

A shot of the local canal, it's the Grand Union Canal as it passes through Berkhamsted. There are plenty of individual items in this photo, but I went for areas; the dark area on the left (includes the building and dark trees/shrubs), the light willow tree and then the light area on the right (includes the pub, the cruiser and the lighter buildings above it). This is maybe a little unbalanced with the left side having more weight. I'm not altogether sure.

Now we are at Ivinghoe Beacon looking at a couple of sheep who are enjoying the scenery (honest). Here I'm not sure exactly how best to analyse the balance of the scene. I've just gone for sheep as the only object to consider, but maybe I should have also considered the grass??? So this is unbalanced.