Contrasts - part 3

I thought that a palm tree trunk would be a potential subject to use for the characteristic of "rough". However, I was looking for a tree where there was a plain or smooth background so that the texture would stand out. It was only on the third day that I found a suitable palm tree in a quiet courtyard. I took a series of photographs:

- the trunk with a blank wall as background - image lacked visual interest

- the trunk where the background was largely blank wall but in one corner another building or some sky was visible - the corner added visual interest and balance

I also had pictures in sunshine with shadows on the wall in the background and without shadows on the wall.

I chose the image with shadows on the wall:-

This I felt conveyed the "rough" character of the trunk within an image that was of interest.

There was an area of white sunshades on grass by the beach. I envisaged a wide angle picture looking down on the pyramid shapes with the grass in the background. Unfortunately, I could not find any vantage point that I could use to look down on the umbrellas. As an alternative, I took a wide angle shot from normal eye level of the lines of sun beds in the morning sun:-

Compositionally, the main visual element is the converging lines of sun beds and sun shades. The sun beds seem to stretch back into infinity conveying the impression of "many" beds which is what I had hoped to achieve.

The swimming pool and water features offered potential pictures for the characteristics of "liquid", "transparent", "moving" etc. Thinking of David Hockney's paintings of figures in swimming pools and also the photograph "Man Diving" by Andre Kertesz in "The Photographers Eye", I thought I would have a go at taking a moving swimmer in a pool. I tried this first in the early evening when the pool was lit but there were no people around. I set up my camera on a table top where there was an interesting view of the pool:-

The curves of the steps contrast nicely against the straight diagonal line in the tiles on the bottom of the pool. This image may have potential to display "rounded" versus "diagonal" contrast. This was taken using ISO 640 at f/9 for 5 seconds.

The slow shutter speed rather undid my plan to take pictures of a moving swimmer. I was acting as my own model, using the self timer. However, the shutter speed was so slow that my movement in the water became no more than a streak of color. I therefore opted for a picture where I was standing still in the water:-

I quite like the picture even though it is not successful as a composition. There is too little light on the upper part of my body and I could not stand still enough during the 6 second exposure for the figure to be reasonably sharp. As a result, my figure seems more of a distraction in the foreground rather than an integral part of the image.

I tried this again in late afternoon whilst there was still daylight. The shutter speeds were higher at 1/4 to 1/6th of a second. However, the pictures did not have any visual impact. I concluded that a blurred figure in the pool was simply not an interesting subject.