Texture is how colours and shapes are captured in an image, allowing you to visualize the texture and quality of an object/objects.

Minor White

Minor White was a key American photographer and writer who made a big impact on photography. He was especially known for his artistic approach and the way he explored deep themes in his work.

Minor White’s nature textured photos are a really interesting l part of his work and they have inspired me to use natural forms for this texture experiment.

He had a knack for capturing the little details and beauty of the natural world. His images often focus on textures in landscapes, plants, and other natural forms, playing with light and shadow to create depth, which I have utilised in my images.

By getting up close and using shallow depth of field, he makes those textures stand out, giving his nature shots a really intimate feel. His love for nature comes through in his photos, making them not just pretty pictures but also something to think about. They evoke feelings and spark contemplation, making them relatable on many levels.

Contact sheet – all photos I have taken

Strongest Images – with preliminary editing

I took the majority of these images up-close in order to capture the texture of the materials. This resulted in a couple of the images become abstract and unrecognizable which I like. Many of the images are deadpan images which create a sense of detachment and sharpness throughout.

My Best Images

This is my favourite version of the image that I edited on my phone. I like this image because it creates a sense of ‘golden hour’ as it looks like the sun is casting golden light over the pebbles. I did this by increasing the warmth in the image and turning up the exposure which exaggerated the light areas. I like how the light hits the high points of the pebbles because the light creates shapes on the pebbles surfaces, enhancing the image. I also increased the contrast which allows the texture of the pebbles to become more apparent.

This is the edited version, I like this image because you can’t immediately recognize what it is, so you aren’t distracted by the material itself, your only focused on the texture. I like how there is a vague pattern in the texture which enhances the impact of the image. With editing the silvery colours are exaggerated which gives the surface a metallic appearance.

This is the image after I edited it on my phone. I like this image because of the texture created by the overlapping of the sea weed. I increased the exposure in order to contrast the lighter and darker areas. I also increased the saturation and vibrancy which made the dull colours become brighter.

I love this image as you can clearly see every line and crack in the wood. I contrasted the light and dark in order to make these lines stand out even more and create an even wider range of tone. I also like how there is a ring of warmer colours which fade into lighter, cooler colouring. The focus is on the wood whilst the stones around it have a softer focus, I think this creates sharpness and definition as it is being contrasted with the background.

Edits on lightroom/photoshop

Original Image

I edited this image to be black and white to take the focus of the colours in the image and allow the texture to be the main point of focus.

Experiments

I used photoshop to experiment with editing this image:

Using the sepia tool to change the colours in the image:

My Final 3 images

Cropping

Here I cropped each image 3 times to see which version was the best.

Layout Experimentation

Final Images

Images in Virtual Gallery

Evaluation

Overall, I have used organic shapes, combined with busy textures and a vibrant use of highlights and shadows. All these elements enhance the formal elements throughout my photos.

Throughout my images I have focused on organic natural shapes and enhances the highlights, which creates a consistent warm tone throughout the group of photos. Throughout this collection I have also tried to achieve consistent shadows to add depth which also enhances the organic textures and shapes.

My first image I edited multiple times, this version is my favourite due to the use of textural lines that create a path that pulls you through the image. adding depth and perspective. The foreground of the photo has a darker tone of deep burnt orange which blends to a bright yellow towards the top (background) of the photo. This variation in tonal range adds balance to the composition. This creates a wide tonal range within the image. The lines also break up the texture of the sand by enforcing some areas to seem smother and others to appear more texturized. The bumps of sand exaggerate the shadows and highlights as they are raised and some areas are hit by the light and others aren’t, this adds to the overall texture of the image.

In contrast, this image has less depth to it and it’s been taken at a deadpan angle. Unlike the first image which takes you on a path, this image focuses solely on the shapes of the pebbles and the reflective surface of the water. The vibrant areas on the pebbles stand out which creates a bright formation of colours, beneath the rippling water. These colours are framed by the shadows around the pebbles, this creates texture and contrast within the image.

its the speed at which the shutter of the camera closes, there is different types of shutter speeds

a slow shutter speed setting which allows a greater amount of light. changing your cameras shutter speed is one way to adjust the overall exposure of an image, also it allows you to be creative by being able to control the amount of blur or lack of it in your images.

the slower the shutter speed the more motion blur your camera will be able to capture when shooting fast moving subjects. but with long shutter speed from two to 30 seconds, any movement in the image will blur. this can create a cool effect with landscapes and the sky, as water and clouds turns soft and streaky.

when we take the photo, the cameras shutter opens, which allows light to reach the recording medium, where an image is made. by controlling hoe long the shutter stay open, we are able to control the resulting image will be like.

which is also known as “exposure time”, shutter speed is measured in seconds or fractions of a second, for example a slow shutter speed of 1/2 means the shutter remains open for half a second, while faster speed of 1/2000 which means it only remains open for one-two-thousandth of a second.

Eadweard Muybridge used fast shutter speeds, around 1/1000th of a second, to capture motion in his famous 1878 The Horse in Motion series. This allowed him to freeze the movement of animals and humans, pioneering motion photography and laying the groundwork for early film technology.

Francesca Woodman – slow shutter speeds

Francesca Woodman often used slow shutter speeds in her photography, which contributed to the dreamlike and ghostly quality of her images. By using long exposures, she created blurred, ethereal effects, particularly when capturing herself or her subjects in motion. This technique added a sense of fleeting presence and emotional intensity to her work, emphasizing themes of identity, fragility, and the passage of time.

Some of my examples with a high and low shutter speed

these photos haven’t been edited yet.

Texture

Texture in photography means the visual quality of the surface of an object, disclosed through variances in shape, tone and colour depth.

Edward Weston

As you can see above I took 147 images from the camera of some objects until I found the one that I wanted to use, I then continued to take many of photos of one object with different camera settings and different lighting conditions to achieve the ideal result I wanted.

Photos I didn’t like

I didn’t like this photo due to some visual noise that was taking part which gives this photo a degraded quality. This photo was taken at an ISO of 400. It also has a wide aperture of 3.5.

I didn’t like this photo due too much visual noise and really bad degrading quality. Taken at an ISO of 6400. It also didn’t match the theme is was going for.

Lastly, I also didn’t liken this photo due too being too dark. This is what happens when you don’t have enough light in your room, in the camera or in the photo. It gives no proper final image.

Selection Process

As you can see above I pressed P to keep the images I wanted to use for my final photos. I used X to get rid of the images i didn’t wanted to use for the future. Then I gave a rating for the images, they all had a rating out of 5.The images with 4 and 5 stars are the images I wanted to use for my final photos. The photos I didn’t like I rated 1-3 stars. Finally I gave them the colour yellow or green, green being the best and yellow being average . Red was for very bad photos. I will edit the images so I can present final photos.

Editing My Best Images:

This photo had to get rid of some of the negative space due to be being unbalanced either side. This means the photo is not equally distributed on each side that is the reason I had to crop it. I originally started with negative space left than on the right.

When cropping, I made sure to keep the line that runs from the bottom left corner of the photo, to the top right.

I enhanced texture to see the material on the coat.

In this photo I had to slightly crop it due to the sides of the photo not being proportional. If I hadn’t cropped the photo, the photo would look unbalanced and there would be too much negative on the foreground of the photo.

After being cropped the photo looks more visually pleasing.

For this image I also had to enhance the contrast and tone, to exaggerate the texture.

In this photo I had to slightly crop it due to the sides of the photo not being proportional. If I hadn’t cropped the photo, the photo would look unbalanced and there would be too much negative on the background of the photo.

After being cropped the photo looks more visually pleasing.

For this image I also had to enhance the contrast and tone, to exaggerate the texture.

Photos Edited Into A White Filter

Edited Photos

In this photo I had to slightly crop it due to the sides of the photo not being proportional. If I hadn’t cropped the photo, the photo would look unbalanced and there would be too much negative on the background of the photo.

After being cropped the photo looks more visually pleasing.

For this image I also had to enhance the contrast and tone, to exaggerate the texture.

This image is in white, so it has no proper colour. This photo has been edited with a white filter on adobe Lightroom.

In this photo I had to slightly crop it due to the sides of the photo not being proportional. If I hadn’t cropped the photo, the photo would look unbalanced and there would be too much negative on the background of the photo.

After being cropped the photo looks more visually pleasing and nice to look at.

For this image I also had to enhance the contrast, exposure ,dehaze, clarity and tone to exaggerate the texture.

As you can see above there are 6 photos edited on Adobe Lightroom. They are both edited in Black and White with a filter . By using black and white it influenced me to chose an Artist like Edward Weston. By doing this it made me think that the most simple colours in the world can make very interesting photos. I think I did this task successfully by these photos being abstract and aesthetically pleasing.

My Final 6 Photos

These are my final 6 photos due to a mixture of a light and dark tone. By having a light tone it makes the photo produced have a sharp with a strong contrast. By having a dark tone many photographs seem to have less impact and less visual vibration. By having some straight lines in the photos it means these lines have geometric quality and also have centre of attention. The texture on all of these photos means that the coat looks quite rough to touch and feel. The images that I took had lots of negative space around it so I had to crop it to make the photos balanced on each side.

Auto Focus VS Manual Focus

Auto focus is the function in a camera that allows the camera to automatically focus on a subject whilst manual focus is the function in a camera that allows the photographer to adjust the focus manually, instead of the camera. Manual focus is useful for many reasons such as having more control on the image composition. This allows the photographer to have control and freedom to choose the preferred focal point. Additionally, manual light works well in low light situations unlike auto focus. This is because it is difficult for auto lenses to keep focus on the subject in little lighting and a shallow depth of field.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph was an optician who practiced photography. Ralph spent three months looking through an unfocused camera in order to learn to see ‘no focus’. He began this project due to his attraction to the out-of-focus backgrounds in some of his…

One of ralphs photoshoots know as ‘zen-twigs’ had a strong focus on experimenting the focus on branches and twigs. He achieved this by using a very large aperture, creating the background subjects to be blurred and the branches to be the main focus.

The focal length tells us the angle of view determining how much of the scene will be captured as well as the magnification. It is the optical distance from the point where the light meets inside the lens to the cameras sensor and is usually measures in mm.

Lenses that have a shorter focal length will have a larger depth of field.

55mm

35mm

24mm

55mm

35mm

24mm

18mm

All of these photos were taken in the exact same position with a tripod, making the only difference in these photos the focal length. 55mm was the longest focal length available on the camera. As you can see from the photos the pictures taken with the focal length of 55mm more of the scene was captured showing jasmine and all of the background. As the focal length gets shorter such as 18mm there was less of the scene captured making jasmine the main subject with less background.

we did a experiment using different paper shapes, lighting and iso

This photo has a high iso we used a spotlight to add more light to the photo to make it stand out more we used a pretty low iso to darken the background to make our paper shape more vibrant.

I like this photo because the shadow in the back makes the photo stand out more and it adds more detail to a small detailed image.

this photo i also used a lower ISO and we added red tint paper but we only put it halfway through the spotlight and it made the actual paper that was photographed red and then it made the shadow of the paper normal light colour

by using light room i edited the original photo. and made it darker and added a lower exposure and higher colour temperature witch then added a blue colour (cold colour) instead of the original white colour by doing this it adds more detail to the normal photo that was half red half white because we covered half the camera with red tint paper

this is the last photo I chose, I used low ISO setting I used an artificial light to highlight the subject in the photo which is the paper origami, additionally I edited the photo a bit to make the shadows more clear. I cropped the photo to leave out the black space from the photo and zoom in on the subject.

Christiane Feser

Christiane Feser creates three-dimensional photographic based work. They are photographs of complex assemblages of repeated forms and shadows with actual elements from the assemblage projecting three-dimensionally from the surface of the photograph. Feser flattens a sculptural object through the act of photography and then reconstitutes that dimension in a new way by turning the photograph into a relief sculpture. The works challenge our perception of dimension and perspective as well as our assumptions about what a photograph is. They also introduce a tension between the past and present: the original photograph is of a thing that has existed, but it has been transformed into a new object that now exists. And in this new form, the constant change of light and shadow across the relief surface will continue to keep the work in the present moment. The works are therefore about both photography and sculpture. They are simultaneously images and objects that play with flatness and depth, and engage with the histories of the photograph as a physical thing in space.

this is one of the photos that she took and that is in one of her museums in America

I began by transferring my shutter speed images into Lightroom, as you can see below, where I pressed ‘import’ at the very bottom and picked which images to upload into Lightroom.

After moving my images, I learnt how to flag the photos I wanted to keep, and leave the others blank that I decided I wasn’t going to use. I also discovered how to rate my images by using stars (1 being the worst and 5 being g the best) to show which ones I liked the most.

Here’s an overall view of both the flags and ratings:

Then I discovered how to colour code my images to make them more noticble and easier to detect when I edit my images in photoshop so I know which ones to edit.

I started off with an image then right clicked it as you can see below, then I clicked on ‘code rating’ so I have the option to colour them ‘red’ ‘yellow’ or ‘green’, they also have blue and purple as an option, but I decided to stick to these three as it is easier to organise.

Once I did a few, I decided to show what it looks like and as you can see below, it is easier to see which ones are good and which aren’t.

I also wanted to experiment and see what I could do, so here’s a before and after of this image where I cropped it, and adjusted the ‘temp’ and ‘tint’ to brighten and exaggerate my image to make the slow shutter speed more noticable.

You can find the ‘temp’ and ‘tint’ by looking on the far right ride of the screen when you are on the image, and you should see this image below:

For my homework I decided to use my house as my textural theme. I was able to find items with lots of texture which was good as it made the shadows look crisp.

For one of my images I took inspiration from Guy Bourdin. Bourdin was a French artist and photographer he was well known for his highly stylized and provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper’s Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale’s.

My Contact Sheet

jh

I added my images on Lightroom to see how they looks on a computer screen. Through this I then starred which photos I preferred, this helped me decide what photos to flag/reject and what photos to edit. However, most photos didn’t have enough texture or they looked too blurry, so this helped choosing.

This allowed me to choose my final images to edit.

Original Photos:

Edited Photos:

Technical:

I used the flash to take the photos as the lighting that day wasn’t the best this meant I used artificial lighting to achieve all my images. For the first image I took the picture head on meaning the flash was just straight on the item, this created less shadows and more reflection. However, with the second image I took it more on an angle which gave it more shadows and more depth. The two last images were also taken head on which meant there wasn’t a lot of shadows just more light. I used a fast shutter speed to take the images so the photos wouldn’t end up blurry and the texture would be crisp.

Visual:

I used a range of colourful and shaped items to show the different textures on each item. Tone was used in the second image to show the contrast of the wood and the shadows. The white juxtaposes with the dark shadows giving the image a sleek look. I showed a range of textures through all four images this gave me a good variety to edit. Most lines were curved as that gave the best shadows or pattern like image 1 and 2. This is good because it made the image look more interesting and more unique.

Contextual:

I wanted to use my house as the topic of this photoshoot as I thought it showed the best texture. This also allowed me to follow an artists image in my own way by using an object that looked most to the concept. I chose to take the images in the late afternoon to use the artificial light instead of the natural light this was because I was able to use the flash and create deeper shadows.

I created a virtual gallery to show off the pictures I thought were the best. This also allowed me to arrange them how I would like and choose different borders for each image, interchanging the black and white frames. I chose images with different lighting and texture to show my range of skills, I made sure to put three images of each subject: paperballs and ripped ripped paper. I also made two perspectives to show the different colours and how lighting can affect how the shadows can look.

Overall, I think I interpreted the paper balls theme well as i showed texture and a range of different backgrounds which allowed me to use different ISO’s and shutter speed. However, I wish I used different lighting instead of white or red as it would of been good to see other colours and how the shadows would be.

Bill Mangold

FORMAL ELEMENTS

Photography is composed of several basic elements; Line, Shape, Pattern, Tone, Texture, Space and Colour. These elements are key to producing meaningful and interesting photos with proper composition and editing.

LINE

Lines in photography are a very important element, proper use of leading lines guide the eye around the image, often placing emphasis on the subject matter, creating depth through perspective or conveying a sense of movement.

SHAPE

Different shapes in photography can portray different atmospheres, for example; organic, rounded shapes or curved lines may imply a calming or peaceful atmosphere, while the rigid, sharp angles and edges of rectangular shapes might seem aggressive or pronounced.

PATTERN

Pattern photography utilizes elements that are repeated, and the repetition of other visual elements can create interesting images. Some photographers also use patterns as the main subject of an image (shown above).

TONE

Tone refers to the levels of brightness in the photograph, from solid black to pure white. Shadows are dark tones; highlights are bright tones. The majority of nature photographs display a wide range of tones, from black or near black to white or near white.

TEXTURE

Capturing texture in a photograph can add visual interest, highlight unique patterns, or even evoke emotions. Texture photography overlaps with many kinds of photography, including everything from fine art to classic portraiture.

SPACE

The element of adding visual space in your photography implies that an object is moving, looking or pointing to imply motion and direction and to lead the eye of the viewer to a specific point.

COLOUR

We use colour in photography to create visual contrast, direct attention or even evoke mood. Of all the Elements, colour is perhaps the most complex, but also, often has the most immediate impact. Colour can impact our viewers’ emotional response to an image.