Day 45 - Geometry in Photography

As I started shooting for more than plain old fun, as a newbie wannabe hobby photographer, I found it hard to use composition and perspective to improve my photos, but as the years have gone by, it has become something I can't shut off anymore. Using Geometry in photography is fun! This shot from a courtyard at Castel Sant'Angelo got me thinking about that.

Fist off, geometric shapes (circles, squares, rectangles etc.) are lovely things to incorporate into photography. It's something that draws you into a picture whether you're aware of it or not. As you can see, this shot has several shapes in it, and I think that's part of why I find it so attractive. And besides, as an old math nerd I always love it when photography and math come together.

Apart from the shapes, this shot is mathematical in another way as well - the classic rule of thirds can be applied to it too. I especially enjoy how the diagonal lines of the stone  railing connects two hotspots together and how the rectangle that is outside the bust's arch fits inside the middle lateral third. I hope you like it too :)

/MrsHjort

Gear: The Math Behind Zoom Lenses

"How far can you zoom with a lens like that?" That was a question I got from a relative of mine a while back. I remembered the specs, which said about 4:1 but, what does that really mean? To answer his question I rummaged through the folders in my photo-library and soon remembered shooting a view a while back using both of my two lenses...

So, to answer the question in a more graspable way, the first shot is taken with my Nikon lens at 18 mm, which is as wide an angle as I can get, and the bottom shot is taken with my Sigma lens at maximum zoom (300 mm). The bottom picture fits into the small area of the top one, and it paint's quite the picture, don't you think? I have to admit, I actually got a little surprised myself. A magnification factor of four does not sound that impressive after all. But when you think about it, magnification, when viewed in this context, is not linear, but rather geometric (since both height and width is involved), and that makes it all the more powerful.

So, to sum up, lets say that you would take one shot in 1:1 scale and then take several zoomed in shots and match them together like you would a jigsaw puzzle, making it into a bigger version of the 1:1 shot. In that case, twice the zoom is not equal to twice the area, as one might expect, but rather four times the area. And that means that four times the zoom is equal to 16 times the area! Cool huh?

I just love it when photography and math meet.

/MrsHjort

Unexpected Beauty

Sometimes, you can find things where you least expect them to be - like when Mr and I took a spontaneous drive up a mountain, during our recent holiday to Madeira. As we were huffing and puffing up a steep road, wondering if even the 1st gear would be enough, we found these wonderful orchids. They were all around, at approximately 1 200 m altitude, and thrived beneath the thick foliage in a moist dark forest. Someone probably planted them along the roadside long, long ago, but since then, they've spread, and now they'd just pop up anywhere... sort of like dandelions back home, but far prettier!

As you've probably figured out by now, I just love floral macros. The last calendar I did was full of them and I just cannot resist that itchy feeling in my index finger whenever I encounter subjects like these, especially not since I got my 70-300 mm macro lens. I's been like Christmas every time I've used it. I could just snap on forever... if not for Mr that is. He usually sighs more and more loudly until I notice him and stop haha!

Orchids are especially interesting when it comes to shooting. You can get so many different lovely angles and really experiment with composition. I've always been fond of the Rule of Thirds (RoT). I love its simplicity and mathematical components. Though sometimes breaking the rules can really do the trick. I really like that about photography. Nothing is written in stone, and everything is up to you. We all look upon the world with different eyes and beauty can be found anywhere! Even in a murky forest, up in the mountains, along a small winding road.

/MrsHjort

Day 20 - "Angles"

Geometry was always my favorite type of math as I grew up. Maybe because it's so real - you can solve it logically just by looking. Geometry is everywhere in our every daily lives and it's easy to find examples to explain why things are as they are. Last semester my students got a homework project that involved designing the "swimming pool of their dreams", they also calculated it's volume, to see how many liters of water it would hold, and its area, in order to see how much tiling it would need. It tuned out very well, and it was a lot of fun to see what they had come up with.

This picture turned out pretty geometrical. I love that you can find math in photography. The golden ratio crops up again and again in most great photos, as well as the subjects we shoot. Math is beautiful :)

/MrsHjort

Day 17 - "Foundation"

Time for yet another pseudo-philosophic rant ;). My latest thesis got published the other day, and it made me think of all the things I've learned since I started my higher education. Much of the material seemed way too advanced at the time - I will certainly never tech any of the math I've learned beyond that of my first semester. At times it felt very unmotivated to master math that was even more advanced than the courses the engineers took . Yet somehow we all felt that it was necessary for us to be on a whole different level than our future students.

My pupils always get very surprised when I tell them how much we actually had to learn; "No way! Really?". And I remember from my own time in upper secondary school that I thought the math teachers were all geniuses! Maybe because at that time I really struggled, and I couldn't imagine how anybody could solve stuff that easily without having to think about it! Now I know :)

/MrsHjort