Angles, Viewpoint and Cropping

Edgar Degas

Degas is a famous artist from France. He is well known for his paintings, sculptures, printmaking and drawings. He is known as an impressionist or a realist. His artwork is inspired by photography; where the artwork captures real life instead of perfection.
Before photography became known, artists would create drawings that are very perfect; but once Degas discovered photography, he changed his style completely and based his artwork on the sorts of images photographers would capture; reality. Photography was able to capture movements which gave the images more of a reality-like feel to them; Degas took that and created paintings that looked more realistic.

There is a rather clear difference between these two paintings. The painting of the jockeys and the horses looks more realistic because it captures a real life moment. Due to the horses moving out of the painting, it can show movement and reality. There is also a lot of open space in this painting.
However, his painting of the ballet dancers looks staged; it doesn't look natural. This painting is more brightly coloured than the painting of the horses.

Early Kodak Photographs

The early Kodak photographs were circular. Using the camera, which was named Kodak No1, you would have to set the shutter by pulling a string and pressing the button on the side of the camera. After the photo had been taken, you would then wind the key to reset the film. Normal people who were taking photographs with the cameras were known as 'amateurs'; this is because photographers would look at their work and criticize it because the 'amateur' photographs would crop people or their compositions were terrible.

Two examples of photographs taken with the Kodak No1.

Camera Angles, Viewpoint and Cropping

I went around the college campus and too some photographs focusing on different angles, viewpoint and cropping.

The first photograph I took was looking up at some people on a balcony inside one of the campus buildings. I like how this image looks because the people are looking down and it makes them seem like giants. The image is quite plain but it shows you the main focus of the image.

The second photograph I took was looking up at the branches and leaves of trees. But when looking at the photograph, I didn't like how it turned out, so I decided to try again. The second attempt looks totally different because I decided to take a picture looking up at the branches from the trunk of the tree. I'm glad I decided to take a second attempt because there is a higher range of colour and it represents a camera angle.

For my third picture, I decided to get one of my friends to be in the shot. This is an example of cropping because I chose my friend to be in the centre of the image so I cropped out some of the background. I think this image can be improved a lot because there are other people in the background and it's not very obviously cropped.

My final image is of one of the campus buildings. This is a mixture of camera angle and cropping because I cropped out a lot of the building but I put the camera on an angle which makes the building look like it is sort of sinking.