Work Diary - Tone

During this session, we set our cameras to black and white and then began shooting photographs which portrayed the element of tone. This was fun because it was interesting to see what I could find to show a contrast in tones. I thought that something with two completely different colours; a light colour and a dark colour would be best to show contrast in tone but I soon found that the best way to show tone was to photograph something with the same colour but just different shades of it. Flowers or leaves were the most obvious and easiest for this as they show a good range in tone so I was curious to see what I could find other than plants. This was fairly hard but it was fun to see if I could find anything.

Out of all my pictures, I think this one, among others, was successful because the contrast is sharp and clear. I wanted the viewer to focus on the arrow and because the tone of it is lighter than the rest of the picture, I was able to do this. The huge contrast between the two tones has helped me to emphasise on the shape on the arrow and the lines being portrayed in the picture. In addition, the fact that the arrow and the background are two opposite colours has helped me to show the element of tone as the difference between them is so obvious. I didn't photograph the whole arrow because I wanted the viewer to focus on the tone rather than the actual arrow and this helped because I prevented them from seeing the entire shape, taking the importance and the focus away from it. I think a lower angle would have been better as it would have allowed me to portray the element of depth as well as tone.

On the other hand, this picture was not one of my best ones and this is because of the light from the sky has prevented the camera to pick up the different shades of green and yellow found in the leaves. I could have picked a different angle where the sky could not be seen. The tone across the picture looks exactly the same apart from a few dark leaves. I think if I used the sky to my advantage and instead of it being in front of me when I was taking the picture, the sky should have been behind me; this way, the lighting would have been directly onto the leaves, allowing the different tones to be highlighted and picked up by the camera.

If I could do this session again, I would try adding colour to my photographs and show tone in this way. I think it would be interesting because each colour would compliment each other and make the image really stand out. Also, the different tones could also contrast with each other and highlight the element of tone.

I would try find objects in the same colour but with different shades like in these two pictures.

I would also try to capture colours at night and experiment with them to see how they can show tone.