For this cliche assignment, I of course used one of Vancouver's most prominent landmarks: the Lion's Gate Bridge. The first/top three pictures in the gallery are the cliche pictures, and the bottom/last three are the non-cliche ones. First off, I have the cliche of the bridge against the background of downtown Vancouver. The other standard cliche ones include one with a cruise ship passing underneath and a full-bridge black and white shot. I feel like these adequately meet the needs of a cliche photo, which almost made it hard to feel good about taking them. I've spent so much time trying not to take/post cliche photos on my own time that it just felt... wrong, to have these open in lightroom. However, it was incredibly easy to take these photos, in that you basically find a good viewpoint, point and shoot. Timing was needed just to allow people (or dogs, as these were taken from the Ambleside dog park) to get out of the frame, and a nice stroke of luck for the cruise ship to be passing underneath while I was out there. Although, It's easy to see why so many of these pictures are taken. They're still pretty to look at, no matter the cliche, and are nice tourist pictures. Most tourists would probably not want my dog as the focal point of the picture instead of the bridge they came to see. I tried to take the non-cliche photos in-between/while I shot the cliche ones, as once you got in the mode of shooting cliche ones it was very hard to snap out of it. It was like going from shooting for an amateur "places of B.C. calendar" to being the weirdo taking pictures from behind a tree. I do like all my non-cliche photos, with the focal points being focused on things other than the bridge: rocks, dog, tree. My favourite is the tree, as it takes away the beach/water aspect that it common to most of the "cliche" pictures you find of the bridge. Overall, I feel like this was a good exercise to do in the beginning of the year, to be able to really think about our photos and what makes them stand out. Something like this might be needed for portrait photography as well, since there's only so many "smile and fake laugh" pictures one can take before they all feel identical. Student flickr pages during a portrait unit should not strive to look like an amateur stock photography page.
I must admit, I did cave to using the easy way out of shooting matching furniture for a symmetry post. In my original attempt, I tried arranging rocks and other things in a symmetrical pattern, but this made it hard for the transition to an asymmetrical photo. I then switched to the subject you see here, with the symmetrical photo on the left and the asymmetrical photo on the right. Personally, I like the asymmetrical photo better, because you can see the texture on the statue. I also feel like it is a better focus on just one object, instead of the objects around it as well. The challenge in this was definitely in the backlighting coming through the window, as it was hard to have it balance with the rest of the picture. I feel like they connect, but they both show very different aspects not just in symmetry vs. asymmetry but also in things like blur. I'm not super happy with the symmetrical picture, but I do like the asymmetrical one.
A common theme I found myself shooting this summer was the ocean. I've lived in Vancouver my entire life, and always been drawn to the natural beauty of the ocean and all the life in it. I mostly stayed in Vancouver this summer, but spent a week at my grandmother's house on Vancouver Island with my sister while our younger cousins were visiting from Toronto. We practically went to a different beach everyday, and most of them were the kind of beautiful Vancouver beaches I know and love: full of rocks, tide pools, and driftwood. My favourite kind of beach. Nicole and I enthusiastically showed our cousins all the marine life we could find, mostly starfish, sea anemones, crabs, and unusually large barnacles. It brought back memories of going to these same beaches when we were younger, and spending most of our time poking through tide pools and flipping over rocks to hunt for shore crabs. I still have yet to edit and post the last of my pictures from this trip, but I'll hopefully finish up soon.
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MoniqueRemember, the camera is your friend. Archives
February 2016
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