Project 20 - horizontal and vertical lines

Vertical lines
Depending on the angle you take verticals I note they do have a tendency to become diagonal, and even use of the Straighten tool doesn't really sort this out. Certainly when viewed through the medium of photography, there are fewer vertical lines than you might think!

Horizontal lines

The Straighten tool is essential here too!

This was an interesting and satisfying exercise in focusing on a particular element almost to abstraction; indeed those that are more or less abstract rather than representational meet the criteria where the line is the first thing the viewer would notice.

Project 19 - multiple points

I'm just preparing to attempt to climb Kilimanjaro and wanted to use this project to show some of the essential bits of kit - the carpet isn't quite suitable but then I wasn't sure what would make good background, though maybe grass would have been a bit more appropriate.
While I was doing this exercise the radio announced that Roman Abramovitch was just on his way up as well with 130-odd porters. It's going to be very crowded and packed with the rich and famous, though suspect it will be a very levelling experience! Anyway...

Boots. The most important items. Cheating slightly in that there is a pair, but just including one would make no sense. Water bottle. Also important, particularly at altitude. Makes a sort of triangle.

Citronella oil to keep the mosquitos at bay at lower altitudes and help prevent malaria. Sets up an implied line between the two bottles and therefore a diagonal sense of direction.

Moved things around a little with the addition of the hat. Also essential at altitude. Creates another diagonal and the boots now facing inwards to the other items make them more involved.

Woolly socks... these do rather spoil the line.

But the addition of the Tanzania guidebook evens things out a little and starts an anti-clockwise viewpoint, particularly with the hat and bottle - the strength of these colours having quite an impact.

But the introduction of the dioralyte (in case of tummy bugs) just off to the side introduces an unresolved tension between the items, partly I think due to its comparatively small size. It is no longer a cohesive group.

By again reorganising and keeping similarly coloured items together, and using the tassles on the hat to link between the reds and the blues this makes a more satisfying image. The size and shape of the emergency trail mix reflects the book as well, helping provide top to bottom cohesion as well as side to side.

Project 18 - relationship between points

A not dissimilar project, but this time between two points. While this scene is a little busier than the swimmer the river seems to be sufficiently isolating to make the point, as it were.

In the first image, the white and blue boat is clearly the most dominant point due to its size and position in the foreground; it's difficult even to see what the other point/boat is in the distance. There is a sense though that one is following the other, set up within the context of the river providing a narrowish space in which the action would be expected to take place. In the second image the last boat, which it is now possible to see is an orange lifeboat, is the more dominant, mostly because of its colour this time although it is of course also closer to the foreground. It still feels as if it's very much following in the wake of the first boat though, emphasising that sense of direction.

Now it strikes me, maybe boats were a bad thing to choose, and on a river as well, because their action is predictable, to a certain extent?