Part 1: Analyse a photograph

For this we were asked to analyse one of our own photographs, following a 10 part structure. It has to be an image we were happy with and we then wrote around 500 words about it.

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My first impressions when I look at this photo is of an English summer, and I am drawn to the golden colour of the cliff on th right hand side. The contrast between that and the blue of the sea and sky reminds me of home and the changes between seasons that I miss in Borneo. I am also drawn to the lines just off the centre of the picture.

The genre of the photo is landscape, a British beach scene. It fits the genre without question, although there are people in the distance they are most definitely not the subject of the photo.

The photo was taken as part of a project for the OCA landscape course, looking at different levels of the horizon. Whilst doing the shoot, I was also taking photos in order to have shots of the area to look at as I live abroad. I wanted shots that showed the contrast between the sky and sand.

As I was walking along  the beach taking shots of varying horizon lines, I saw the log in the distance and decided that I wanted to use it in some shots. I liked the shape of the log and the way the colour almost blended with the colour of the sand. There are people in the shot but they are far in the distance and only just visible.

The photograph was semi-planned – I had the shoot planned for the landscape module, but along the way I was looking for different viewpoints and shots in order to show people the beach when I went back overseas. I was conscious that I wanted something to show the colours, although I was not out shooting at golden hour due to availability of transport. The horizon line is placed using the rule of thirds, in the lower third of the image.

The shot was taken on a Nikon d90, at 18mm as I wanted as wide an angle as possible. I used an aperture of  f11 to show a little more detail in the shot, and a shutter speed of 1/640s as the sun was quite bright in the scene. The ISO was 200, the lowest I could set on the camera as it was a brightly lit scene. I knelt down to get a slightly different perspective and to help get the log where I wanted it.

I took it in a style to show the strong colours, although a deeper blue in the sky would have better shown this.

The intent of the photographer in this case was to take an image to use to show others and for her to remember the place. During the shoot I was using and challenging the rule of thirds, and in this case think it works. Post processing involved a slight change in levels and sharpening.

I believe the image works for the purposes I took it for. Of course, images are subjective and others may not think that it is successful!

Analysing the image helped me look at it in depth and think a lot about it. I had to look closely and think about the decisions I took at the time. Using the structure helped me to organise my thoughts more clearly and gave me a chance to critique my work in detail.