In order to take a closer look of the images I’d produced so far, I put some up in my hall area at home. This helps in recognising both positive and negative aspects of each image and how they work together. This exercise also assists in highlighting possible areas of project progression.
While putting up the prints, I noticed three aspects immediately.
First, the difference the sky tones make to an image. In the single image of the tree with the paler sky, it feels ‘open’. The other images, where the top part of the image are darker, compress the sky. There is palpable claustrophobic sensation. This effect also reminded me of my classmate Mark’s use of a vignette in his images of Waverley Abbey and how it affected these images in the same way. The images need to ‘breathe’.
Secondly, the sky in this image had a very soft sheen to it that contrasted perfectly with the spiky thorns.
This lead me to the third observation – the ratio. All of these images were taken at 2:3. This has the effect of ‘stretching’ the scene in both portrait and landscape orientation. One issue I had with this when taking shots of the trees was being able to fit in all of the branches. Also, there was sometimes ‘too much’ sky and foreground resulting in a less satisfying composition. To give me a better idea of what this may look like, I created a 4:5 cropped version of the following image.
2:3 Ratio (Original) 
4:5 Ratio (Crop)
In reflection while writing this post, I also noted that the original shot (from on 25 October 2020) was taken at 24mm and at F11. This reflected the feedback that I need to use a different lens and focal length.
The other main observation was in relation to this configuration of images.
The trees needed a ‘quieter’ sky and a uniformity of the horizon line. This observation and the ones above provided a clearer direction in my goal to formulate a particular technique for this project. It also sparked further areas of practice-based research.
Jennie Meadows MA Photography 