December in Photography – Day 29

This article was written January 2-4, 2024

For day 29, I went for a walk in the city during the afternoon. I had to run an errand, so I figured I should use the travel time to take pictures. However, there were a lot of duds on that day.

Buildings

Prompted by my previous day’s venture, I was interested in taking more pictures of buildings.

I think some of these aren’t too bad, although I think I should have focused on the aperture instead of the shutter speed, maybe using f/8.0 or f/11.0. There was no reason to go for f/4.0 or f/5.6 here, since nothing needed to be “isolated”.
Otherwise, I think these aren’t too bad, albeit maybe a bit bland. I will say that I much prefer the darker exposure on these, making them feel a little more ominous against the looming gray sky.

I think this picture showcases an interesting aspect of framing I should take into consideration from now on. This specific picture doesn’t look “straight” to me, it looks askew. However, there are some elements that do appear fairly straight, such as the signs on the left. Then, why does this look so askew? I think it has to do with the “focus” of the picture (the central element). The thing that’s meant to draw the eye here would be the building in the back, taking center-place. And this building is not framed at a straight angle.

With this picture I tried to capture multiple buildings. However, I think I over-committed on the building in the top-left. Because it’s along an edge instead of the center, the top of the frame feels rather empty, with the sky taking most of the top-right. (And I didn’t even fully capture the building in question). I think there are two things I could have taken tried to improve this one:

• Framed the picture differently so that the building is in the center.
• Zoomed in a bit and lower the angle, such that the frame contains less of the sky. It’s ok to only partially capture the building (especially while in the background) and leave its potential height to the imagination.

There’s a lot I really like in this picture. I enjoy the reflections of another building, along with the exposure of the gray sky, granting this picture a darker atmosphere. However, while I thought I’d like the trees in this one, I’m not convinced about their role here, especially with their exposure. I’m also not sure about the framing itself. Despite how much I like this gray sky, I’m skeptical about its position in relation to the other elements. It might be worth trying to crop this image and see what can come out of it (In particular, the bottom and the left side are ripe for a good crop). Maybe the sky would feel better then, its proportion within the overall picture modified.

In person, I thought this one might be special, since the color of the building seemed such an interesting shade. However, the framing is not great, and once again, this gray sky is a little too bright. Also, that lamppost on the left really should be there, and I likely could have gotten rid of it simply by moving a little bit. It might be possible to rescue it with post-processing and cropping, but I haven’t started dabbling with those yet.

I think this one isn’t too bad, and I’m somewhat happy with the end result. I think the banners on the left make it look like an old webpage, with ad-banners and pop-up ads. It’s a different aesthetic, and I enjoy that.

I think these two pictures help showcase that sometimes, less is more. Despite the fact that the second picture technically contains the interesting aspects of the first one, I think the first one works much better. The side that’s not lit by incandescent lights feels very bland in comparison, and takes a bigger portion of the picture. Meanwhile, the first picture is very focused on that specific part of the building, and the atmosphere it provides. The bright pastel colors being de-saturated and the orange tint on the intermediate floors gives this what I consider an interesting vibe. My only gripe is, as usual, with the lights that are captured as part of the picture.

Reflections

I really enjoy this picture, though that’s in part because I find reflections in photographs rather interesting. I think the focus is reasonable, and I particularly like how the windows break the reflection and make it a little distorted. I also find that the bottom of the building brings an interesting contrast here. If there’s one thing I would change, it would probably be to remove the overexposed gray sky from the background.

There are a few things I enjoy about this picture. The reflection is really nice and highlights a dark evening. I also enjoy transition between the reflection and the office, which a gradual dimming of the reflection in favor of the indoor brightness. However, I do think the lights were overexposed here. I also probably should have tried to move aside and reframe this picture a bit in order to avoid some of those lights.

Figurines

At the end of the day, I saw a display of figurines for a creative composition. I figured that would make for great subjects. However, I unfortunately rushed through it, and thus, a lot of the pictures were duds, whether from the poor lighting, terrible focus, exposure issues, or just dirty tables. Here are some of the ones I liked.

I found this little one very cute and festive. I think there’s reasonable focus on the figurine, and the background is adequately unfocused. However, the background is uninteresting, yet draws attention away from the figurine. Maybe I should have carried a blank sheet of black paper with me to serve as a supplemental background (Although whether it would have been acceptable to do so in this scenario is questionable).

Let’s continue with this one, not because I particularly like it over the others, but because of the lighting. While the figurine itself might feel a little underexposed (although it still has decent contrast), I like how little the background is present, and how it affects this picture. It looks like a toy left in a somewhat dark room.

I really enjoy this guy, and the pose from the side gives me strong vibes of the “cool (anti-)hero” in video games or cartoons/anime, especially in the 90s. I also enjoy how much of a difference the two angles make, despite the fact the figurine itself did not change.

Another figurine I really enjoyed, the outside appearance reminiscent to a mythical Chinese creature, blended into a costume for this human character, and that confident/cocky smile. Great style! Once again, I’m happy with the differences the two angles bring to this picture. I also enjoy the reflection on the surface of the figurine’s stand.

Favorite Picture of the Day

Yup, on this day, the big reflection takes the cake, although one of the figurines got really close to getting the top spot.

Dishonorable Mentions

While successes are important, I think failures are equally, if not more, important when it comes to learning and progressing. Thus, here are some of the underwhelming pictures I took. Enjoy.

Nature in the City

While walking in the streets, I stumbled upon a nice area where there were a lot of trees in close proximity of buildings, and I liked this contrast. However, in most of these pictures, the plants aren’t really sharp, which diminishes the results. Also, the gray sky offers a really poor background here.

I think these two pictures suffer from my main issue in this section, a lack of sharpness in the vegetation. And it’s pretty disheartening! I think the framing here was pretty good, and I like how the building creeps up in the background. As a smaller-sized picture, I think it isn’t too bad, but the second you try to look closer, the sharpness takes away from these pictures.
*As an aside, you might notice that the second picture is less exposed than the first one, and might be wondering why. Looking at the numbers, I believe I realized that my shutter-speed wasn’t on a full-stop, but a half-stop (1/180sec instead of either 1/125sec or 1/250sec). Since I’m trying to limit myself to full-stops (at least at my current stage of learning), I probably opted to fix the shutter-speed, and go for under-exposure as opposed to over-exposure, thus lowering it to 1/250sec.

The exposure of the first picture isn’t too bad, although there’s a very bright electronic board at the bottom right. However, there is a definite issue with the sharpness of the trees. I think the first reason for this is my point of focus, it seems like I’m focus on the foreground and the street lights. Moreover, for some reasons, I was focusing on the shutter speed instead of the aperture, for no good reason. It’s not like there’s any important movement in the picture that I’d want to freeze, and even if there was wind, it wouldn’t be that bad. I should probably have gone for an aperture size of f1/8.0 or f1/11.0 instead, and adjusted the shutter speed accordingly.
The second picture, however, takes the cake. For some reason, I both increased the aperture size by half a stop, and lowered the shutter speed by a full stop. This means I increased the exposure by a stop and a half! When the exposure was already pretty good. And on top of the overexposure, the focus is pretty bad, with everything you’d want to pay attention to blurry.

Here, I spotted a nice bright-colored pattern on a building, juxtaposed with dark-green trees, and thought it might make for an interesting contrast. Unfortunately, it seems to really fall flat. I think part of it is the fact that I tried to fully capture the building and the trees, simultaneously capturing the gray sky. It might have worked much better with a blue sky providing an extra bright color. The other reason I believe this might be falling flat is that there’s nothing to draw the eyes to the contrast. There’s a building, and it’s partially obscured by trees. Maybe if I’d zoomed much more, losing the context of the building and the tree, things would have appeared more appealing visually.

If it weren’t for the overly bright cloudy sky, these two pictures wouldn’t look too bad as thumbnails. However, once you make them bigger, the lack of sharpness comes back in full swing, and negatively affects these pictures.

Once again, the tree isn’t sharp at all (Which is likely partially to blame on the extremely high ISO), and doesn’t look lively. However, in this case, I think it could have worked. It has a role to play in this context, juxtaposing a surreal feeling of nature with the busy life of the city. I also really enjoy the reflection effect from the windows on the right, and the people relaxing at the bottom, somewhat pushing the narrative of the nature helping escape the business of modern life.
However, while I did adjust the exposure between shots, and I think the second one is decent for the tree and the building on the right, the left building had way too much light coming from it, and is way over exposed. There’s also a similar issue with the ground-floor room on the right. Ideally, I could and should have fixed this by changing angles, moving aside and trying to frame the tree against a single building.

Amongst all of these pictures of nature juxtaposed against the city, I think the first one here has the most potential. The lack of sharpness from the trees in this frame, along with the distant building in the fog, play well against this city street. However, I think that a lower shutter speed might actually have been better here, giving the flag a sense of movement. Unfortunately, the street itself has a lot of noise, likely due to my use of ISO 6400, which I think is ridiculously high for daytime photography.
Between these two pictures, I honestly think I prefer the first one, and I think it’s important to look into it and try to figure out why. The first reason, I think, is that the second picture is too empty. The gray sky has too big of a presence. Next, I also think the building being closer to the center of the frame (yet still being on the left side, representing the “back” of this picture) helps focus things. Finally, as stated above, I do think the lack of sharpness in the first picture gives it a certain style and helps create a more significant contrast. On the second pictures, the trees are a little sharper, but not that sharp, and don’t look alive.

I took a lot more such pictures, but I think this should be sufficient to illustrate my points. I should probably eventually conduct more experiments to determine the real cause of these issues:

• A lack of proper focus with the lens?
• Too high of an ISO? (At least for my sensor)
• The aperture size used?
• The presence of a gray sky?
• The foggy air?

Exposure issues

I think these two images are perfect to showcase one of the woes I’ve had with exposure. In the first image, the top half of the picture, with the sky and the buildings, seem to have a reasonable exposure. However, the trees are definitely underexposed. Meanwhile, in the second picture, the trees have a good exposure, but the buildings and sky are overexposed.
One of the potential solutions for this would be, I believe, to use a graduated ND filter. However, I currently do not have one, and it seems like they might be expensive, so I likely won’t be getting one any time soon.

Here’s another example of this issue. I only changed the exposition by a full-stop (in this case the shutter speed). The trees and the building/sky can’t seem to simultaneously be properly exposed. While it’s not as drastic as the previous case, it’s still fairly bad. Unfortunately, due to the placement of the different elements, this isn’t something I could as easily fix with a graduated ND filter. Biting the bullet and accepting to use half-stops or third-stops might make it slightly more balanced, though it clearly wouldn’t fully fix it.