Figure/Ground

Ripon
f/2.5 1/400 ISO 400

Natasha

F/1.4 1/400 ISO 400

Library Cart

f/1.4 1/250 ISO 400

For the photo of Ripon, he was staring out the window of the classroom that we were shooting inside of during the flash demonstration on Saturday the other week, and when I noticed how nice the light was on his face, I asked him if I could take a photo of him, and the result is what you see above. I shot with a very low aperture/depth of field (f/2.5) because personally I love low depth of field portraits. When the eyes are in focus in a portrait and everything else is blurred, I absolutely love it. I shot with a fast shutter speed as well (1/400) just to ensure there was no possibility of camera shake (he and I were both sitting on one of the tables at the time). I chose the square crop and to have him in front of a blank section of wall because I wanted him to be the main focus of the photograph, no distractions in the background.

For the photo of Natasha, we were walking in one of the basement levels of the school where the janitors work (I know a lot of the passageways down there because I work in the building and frequent those areas), and she happened to stop and shoot some photos of the wiring/pipes above us, and again I noticed how nice the light was on her face, so I told her to hold her pose so I could take her photo. I shot again with a shallow depth of field (f/1.4) to bring focus to her, but let the lines stay in the background instead of moving away from them to give the photo more details to look at (unlike the portrait of Ripon where it is literally just him) and for the lines to somewhat lead into Natasha's face. Again I shot at a quick shutter speed to ensure no shake/everything would be sharp.

For the final image (in the library), I was not feeling inspired by the architecture at all (I forgot my wide angle lens, only brought my 50mm) so I ventured into the reference section where I found the cart you see in the photo, and was interested in it for some reason. I put it in the middle of the walkway, turned it horizontally, and took the photo. Again, I shot with a low depth of field because it is simply what I enjoy, but also because there are/were a lot of distracting elements in the background that I didn't want the viewer to be distracted by.