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#2 - Contrasts

Why Are You Doing this Assignment? Contrast is a basic tool in photography. You can make a photograph in which the sole subject is contrast. You can use contrast to add to the idea or emotion that you're communicating in your photograph. An equally valuable tool in photography is the repetition of colors, tones, shapes, and so forth. If you wish, you can look for repetitions for this assignment.

Do the Following

Photograph contrasts.

The contrasts can be in the same photograph or in two separate ones.

Photograph in close, as well as broad scenes.

It'll be easier to photograph outdoors.

Some examples are listed below.

Examples

You don't have to do any or all of these.

Light Contrast

Photograph the shadows on a brownstone from the sidelight of a sunrise.

Contrast this light with the shadowless light of the brownstone in the shade or under an overcast sky.

Color Contrast

Photograph the large, red, "nine" on 57th St., with blue truck in the background.

Photograph a sliver of warm colored sunlight piercing the deep blue of shade.

Spatial Contrast

Photograph something close, and something else that is far away, in the same composition.

For example, photograph a peony in bloom, with the conservatory of a botanical garden in the background.

Often, a wide-angle lens is useful for this situation.

Conceptual Contrasts

• Working/ broken

• Wealth/ poverty

• Purity/ sin

• Old/ new

• Clean/ dirty

• Construction/ decay

Passage of Time

Photograph Grand Central at 5pm and at 10pm.

Weather

Photograph a park on a wet day and on a sunny day

Abstract, Formal, Ideas

• Smooth/ rough

• Geometry

Repetition

An equally valuable tool in photography is the repetition of colors, tones, shapes, and so forth.

Photographs can use only contrasts, only repetitions, and a mixture of the two as well.

If you wish, you can look for repetitions for this assignment instead of contrasts.

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