The Art of Photography: A sequence of composition

This exercise is about awareness and reaction; photography on the hoof so to speak. The idea is to keep the camera to the eye throughout an event or sequence.

I chose a potentially challenging subject: lunchtime at the school at which I work as Finance Director. It seemed to me that this was an ideal subject for a sequencing composition, being able to photograph the kitchen staff preparing and serving food, and the children eating their lunch; followed by the clearing up process.

I was fortunate to be able to do this by virtue of my position; did get permission of Principal and also got the images checked so as to exclude any of children whose parents had expressly wished they not have their photograph taken (there were none in the sequence).

The exercise was adapted a little from the proposal in the notes, to include several images not containing people; I wanted to provide a connotative element to the sequence, showing the before and after situation without the people. We start with an empty queuing area and dining area, proceed to the preparation of the food, then the children enter, buy and pay for their food, eat it, and put the trays away for the staff to clear and clean before setting the area straight for another day.

As some of the images were more planned, I took the opportunity to use some skills form the focussing exercise to have part of an image out of focus.

Details of the images are not included here,most were shot with 24-105 mm lens, an ideal lens for quick shots with a good range of zoom. Four images were taken with 10-22 mm lens.

Here is the sequence with notes:

Queuing area outside the dining hall showing the ropes to separate entrance and exit doors. Used a 4mm aperture here to focus on the closest stand.

A table taken with wide angle lens. Connotes the empty dining area awaiting the diners.

The menu is displayed, again connotes the idea of awaiting for patrons.

We continue now with the preparation of the food, first a standard image of a food preparer, then...

...a close up....

...and another...

.. and a third.

Now we have the first children arriving with appropriate control at the entrance! Lesson from here is that auto settings are not always optimal. This was shot with aperture 4.0 and consequently the child is somewhat out of focus.

Depth of field less of a problem on this image. Entry control procedures are in full swing. Note here the reluctant subject; the image was used to demonstrate that not everyone acts naturally, least of all youngsters..There were several other composed images that were not suitable for this exercise but helped to indulge interested students in what was going on.

Again we have some focussing problems as we show the students entering for meal.

This shows the serving process from the perspective of the staff.

This shows the students engaging with the catering staff over their choice of meal....

...with a close-up of the food.

Payment for the meal is made at the till,,

..using an advanced fingerprint recognition system aligned to payment records.

The children eat their meals. Here I took a couple of standard shots.

And a close-up of the mash being stabbed with a fork. Trying here to show the process TO the food as well as OF the food.

The empty plates are stacked up...

..and taken away. This image works particularly well as we get the impression of someone leaving to the left as the kitchen staff member takes plates off to the right.

A grab shot here of the back of a student leaving - meal over.

Back to the catering staff whose job is now to wash up. Flash used here with consequent shadow on the back wall.

His job is over and we have gleaming pans lined up for duty tomorrow. This was taken to use the focussing techniques used in an earlier exercise.

Catering staff's job is done and taking 5 at the end of the shift.

Wide angle shot of the kitchen demonstrating the end of day appearance.

And the dining area is left orderly and clean.

Chairs neatly placed on tables. Again, wide angle used here.

Lessons learnt:

Thinking of a sequence is the perhaps the biggest challenge, demonstrating the need to think about proactive photography as opposed to reactive shots taken because the situation or subject presented itself;
React with your environment - engaging with the children here helped to raise interest with what I am doing - in a sense the experience is about me taking photographs as much as children having lunch;
Keep thinking about camera settings - it is doubly important to think constantly about the appropriate exposure, focal length and aperture settings. Digital cameras can make for laziness as another image can always be taken, but in this sort of action sequence that is not true.

After doing this original sequence, the opportunity later materialsied to take a fun sequence. Looking put of the window, I saw two birds fraternising on a lampost so came up with following sequence: