Exercise: Fitting the frame to the subject

I spent a long time thinking about an interesting subject for this exercise.  I was asked to select a subject that is compact in shape,  clear in appearance, and affords me the opportunity to take a photograph of it from close by and far away.  I realised that the term compact does not necessarily mean small and is used here to describe a subject that has defined borders and an identifiable shape.

I decided that the London City Hall would make a great subject for this exercise while also providing a visually stimulating and interesting subject to capture.  Unfortunately I was forced to conduct this exercise in relatively bad weather with failing light and without the use of a tripod.  I do plan to return to this location when the sky is more interesting however overall I am pleased with the results I achieved.

Results
The four photographs required for this project consisted of taking photographs with no consideration to composition, with the subject fitting the frame as tightly as possible, a close up photograph without any of the edges of the subject showing and a photograph with the subject occupying 1/4 or less of the frame.  There results of this exercise are below.

No consideration for composition

Tight fit to frame

Close up

Subject 1/4 frame or less

I was extremely surprised at how different each of the photographs above looks.  I realised now that as I view a scene I have preconceived ideas with regards to how a photograph of that scene will look.  By looking at the subject through the viewfinder and at different distances and angles I realise that a wealth of creative possibilities are available that I had not considered when first surveying the scene.

I created several crops from the photographs I took to explore further possibilities.  I have presented these crops below.

I have cropped the above photograph with a landscape orientation and have tried to eliminate unnecessary areas including the foreground and on the left side of the frame.  I have placed City Hall in the top right of the frame and included Tower Bridge in the background.  I feel this is an aesthetically pleasing crop which has areas of interest in the foreground as well as in the background.

Here I have chosen a square crop.  While this shape of crop may be required for certain types of frame or placement I found that this crop did not work for the scene that I was capturing for this exercise.  The curving shape in the foreground is abruptly cut off on the left side of the frame and this leaves this interrupts the flow of the photograph.

The above crop is vertical or portrait.  I chose to place the subject in the top of the frame.  This frame is not pleasing to me for two reasons.  Firstly the curving and flowing structure in the foreground is abruptly cut off and interrupted on the left side of the frame.  Secondly this composition does not include significant features of this scene including Tower Bridge in the background.

This panoramic crop aims to include as much areas of interest from within the scene as possible while eliminating as much of the rather unintersting sky as possible.  In order to fit the main subject, City Hall, in I chose to rotate the frame.  This angled view gives the scene a dynamic feel.  I find this crop to be visually pleasing.  This is a crop I would never have thought of trying before conducting this exercise.

For this final crop I have chosen another panoramic view.  However, this time the scene was not rotated and this results in much of the main subject being eliminated.  I feel this crop does not work for this scene as the missing part of City Hall results in the photograph feeling incomplete and far less interesting than the previous crop.

In summary this exercise taught me to view a subject from a variety of distances and angles.  My favourite crop was the penultimate one.  This was particularly pleasing as that is a crop I would never have attempted in the past.