Exercise 6 - Fitting the frame to the subject

For this exercise I chose my trusty garden hand fork – Stainless steel with a comfortable wooden handle. The obvious place to place it was in the garden, so it also gave me the opportunity for a bit of weeding!!

It was a very windy day, so it wasn’t practical to use long shutter speeds due to the movement in the plants, so there’s a reduced depth of field in the images.

Camera: Nikon D300s, set in programme mode, ISO 200, focusing single point and single focus.

Lens: Nikkor 18 – 200 mm VR

So here’s the first image, taken in the garden after a bit of weeding – no real plan for the framing. Just point and shoot. The settings for this image were 50 mm, f/5.6, 1/125 sec

It seems that I’ve put the camera in portrait position and more or less filled the frame with the subject without thinking.

For this second image I’ve placed the fork on a bed of thyme, to enable better framing. In this case I wanted to fill the frame with the fork. It seemed the best framing was across the diagonals of the frame. If it had been a calmer day I would have used a longer exposure to increase the depth of field and bring more of the flowers into focus – not to mention the bent tine on the fork.

Settings for this image were: 38 mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec.

The third image is of part of the subject, showing the scratches on the steel and the moulding round the shank. The settings for this image were: 90 mm, f/7.1, 1/200 sec. The light for this shot must have been greater than the previous ones, as the aperture was smaller and the speed greater – it was probably due to the reflective steel taking up a greater portion of the frame.

I prefer this image to any of the others in this exercise – it’s got much stronger lines and less distractions. A case of less is more?

The fourth image is at the widest aperture of 18 mm, with f/5.6 and 1/320 sec. This shows the fork back in the ground with its mate the trowel on hand. If it weren’t for the trowel the fork may have been missed in this shot.

This shows the fork in context with its place of work and hopefully some of the fruits of its labours. This is the image I’ve used for the cropping part of the exercise.

This first crop places the fork to the left of the image. I think this shows it off well, complemented by the blues of the Ajuga. In hindsight I should have moved that piece of ivy to allow a better view of the fork, but I think it’s still a pleasing image.

With the fork cropped to the right of the picture it has lost its prominence, due to the distractions in the image. There’s just too much going on here.

This portrait format crop doesn’t work so well either. The fork is too central for my liking and doesn’t portray itself nearly as well as in the first crop.

In this final crop I tried rotating the frame, so that the handle became more vertical, but I’m afraid the horizontals and verticals in the rest of the image just look wrong. So it seems the first crop was best for me – I should have accepted my first instinct.

This exercise has reinforced how important it is to get the framing and cropping right for the image that’s to be portrayed. It’s necessary to consider what is required for the image, whether it’s for an artistic look – as in the close up – or for an image which puts the subject into perspective – as in the first cropped shot.