Isolationist Theory and the Histogram

By André Costantini

Everything that you include in the frame gives a viewer information and helps them form some understanding or meaning. The same can be said for what you choose to not include in a frame. By eliminating things you can isolate a subject, removing contexts but creating beauty. Here are some images that I have focused on the subjects. Some of them may look as though they were taken out of their natural environment, but I assure you they have not been. Often this requires either getting really close to a subject or using your zoom lens to focus in on just one part. These three images were all taken with the Tamron 18-270 VC PZD, ISO 250 around f6.3 and somewhere between 1/125 and 1/200 of a second.

The exposure mode of the camera was in Manual for all of these images. This is because the camera's meter would not get the exposure correct. With so much whiteness in the image, the meter wants to compensate and make the image darker. Manual mode gives you more control. As you can see from the histogram (that little graph below) there is a lot of white in the image. You can tell because the histogram gives you a graphical analysis of your image. The right side represents the white tones and the left the black tones. So according to this graph there is virtually nothing in this image which is true black and there is a bunch of white (so white there is no detail) which in this case is not only exactly what we want but exactly what we are seeing in the actual image.

All of these images are backlit by the sky, which is also creating the light on the subject. Backlit or high-key scenes often require these exposure adjustments so that your subjects are not silhouettes. But by isolating your subject you focus all of the attention on that subject which can make compelling imagery without visual distractions.

Comments

[Randy Hull]

I really like the way you shot the cherry blossoms. I live in the Washington D.C. area and get very bored with this subject. You handled it in a fresh way.

[Marinus]

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