Project 11 - Balance

The photographs for this Project were taken at the nearby fishing port of Sancti Petri on a bright sunny morning last week. It is a great place for photography with its fishing boats and more expensive leisure craft together with a lovely beach and seascapes. If only my photos did it justice!


I chose seven shots to consider for this project and deciding on the balance was not easy, irrespective of the number of items making up the composition.


In Photo 1 (f/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO400 @55mm), there are two main features, being the larger boat sideways on and the smaller rowing boat in the left hand corner. The two boats in the water do not seem to affect the balance. It seems to me that there is approximate balance in this shot as the larger boat extends more than halfway across the frame to add weight to the rowing boat at the lefthand edge.





Photo 2 (f/5.6, 1/2500s, ISO 400 @55mm), on the other hand, appears out of balance with the larger boat in the left foreground and the boat sideways on behind it more than enough to outweigh the small boat on the lefthand side. Perhaps the balance would be better without the presence of the sideways on boat?




Photo 3 (f/11, 1/400s, ISO400 @51mm) gives a better balance with two distinct displays of almost equal size balanced around the boundary of the white and coloured edge. Perhaps it would be better taken from a little further back to ensure that the white and coloured walls appear the same size.






In Photo 4 (f/36, 1/50s, ISO400 @55mm), the two figures and the boat they are painting are the dominant forms with the two boats on either side not affecting the balance. The weights here seem to be in balance.





Photo 5 ( f/5.6, 1/640s, ISO400 @55mm) is interesting, not so much for the two boats, as for the strong shadow cast by the blue boat in the foreground, which seems to affect the balance of the shot slightly.



Photo 6 (f/22, 1/100s, ISO 400 @21mm) shows a single building with a wider single storey on the left joined to a narrower two storey part on the right. I would have preferred that the palm tree was to the left of the building to increase the weight on the left hand side but the shot looks pretty balanced to me.



Finally, in Photo 7 (f/29, 1/100s, ISO400 @43mm), the two boats in the bottom left-hand corner dominate but there are lots of smaller boats in the shot (do they balance the photograph?). This is very difficult to tell but I like it!