Following up on my previous post, I went looking for a variety of contrasts as a first step in improving my photographic eye for good composition.
BTW… for a wealth of info on composition, Michael Freeman’s Photo Blog is a very worthwhile read & one I highly recommend bookmarking.
My plan was to find all my shots on one morning walk & I was surprisingly successful!
Here are my first attempts at specifically looking for contrasts in composition, all shots taken within a 20 minute timeframe.
Found this one for “Curved/Straight Lines”, perhaps not that interesting but clearly has both straight & curved (circular) lines….
Lines... Curved & Straight
This version is a little less boring. It lacks ‘straight lines’, but I like it… 🙂
Straight lines & curves (sort of)
In the same place, I found my next candidate for “Smooth/Rough Textures” –
Contrasts Smooth & Rough
This is my favourite shot…while looking for “Large/Small”, I found two barns, one large, one small, you may notice that here the large barn is the small one & the small barn is the large one, usually I’m not that imaginative so I actually managed to impress myself with this shot…:-)
One large, one small but which is which?
The last shot found on my walk was this one, for Much/Little”…. this baseball cap & empty water bottles were left scattered around the garbage can after a slow pitch game. Nothing was rearranged – I thought it was clear enough as is… one hat, many bottles!
Many/few or Much/little
I have combined the last 2 challenge shots, which were “Light/Dark” and “Liquid/Solid”, into one photograph. I think it works nicely & it wraps up my first set of contrasts:
Light/Dark AND Liquid/Solid - all in one!
And we are now one step closer to better composition via contrasts!
Here are the challenge contrasts for next week:
Hard/Soft
Thick/Thin
High/Low
Strong/Weak
And that’s enough, because that’s a difficult set of shots… Whew! I’ll certainly surprise myself if I find all those….!
I would love it if you joined in & challenged yourself to find some of these concepts & then sent me a link to your shots or left me a reply with whatever thoughts you might have on my little photographic venture here…. 🙂
Adventures in Surviving the Shift 
Welcome to WordPress, Janet. My blog here is only a year old but I have 3 others on here dating back 5 years or more (on other subjects).
I love your idea of self challenges and will try to work that into my routine. I’m also a Michael Freeman fan and have 3 of his books.