Work Diary - Texture

In this session, we were told to go out and photograph the element of texture. At the beginning, I thought this was quite straight-forward and as I went around college and started looking for things to photograph, I found that texture was easy to find; it was pretty much everywhere and it wasn't hard to find a diversity of interesting textures. However, it was incredibly hard to figure out how to photograph the texture of something in a way that this element is exaggerated. After experimenting, I found that for most of my pictures, zooming into the object was the best option as this was one of the best ways to show off the element of texture. Also, I learnt that the lighting has to be across the surface rather than facing the surface as this creates shadows and further highlights the texture of the surface. After a while, this became easy to do as I received more practice.

Out of all my pictures, I think this one was quite successful because the details shown are very sharp, making it really easy for the viewer to imagine feeling this carpet and its rough feel. The red colour of this carpet has helped me show the texture even more, the lighting has also helped; it get darker at the bottom of the picture, this forces the viewer to focus on the dark bit, which is the bit that is extremely clear, rather than the light bit, where the carpet is quite blurry and doesn't show the details very much. there are also little black bits, which adds a 3-dimensional element to the picture.

However, this picture wasn't successful because it turned out blurry and therefore, reduces the sharpness of the picture and no details which show texture is present. If I had waited for the camera to focus properly, I could have had a good picture. Moreover, the Sun would have emphasised the texture of the rock and it is shining directly onto it, creating a shadow, which would have been rough and rugged, further showing the texture and helping the viewer imagine what it would feel like against their skin. There is also a contrast between the rock and the soil, there is a difference in the shade of brown - this would have made the rock stand out and made the viewer to focus on it rather than the other little stones and twigs around it.

In the future, if I had the chance to do this again, I would zoom in to the picture as I'd normally do but afterwards, I would sharpen the picture as I'm editing it because I think this would show texture even more.

The details of the surface will become more clear once I sharpen it and this will help me show the element of texture.

I would also try to use the selective colour tool in Photoshop and change the colour of the picture, this will show texture because depending on the photographed surface, a certain colour may bring out its texture even more.