AED 200 Elements and Principles

I went into a lot of these with a preconceived motion of what I wanted to do. I looked at each element and principle and thought about how and where I could photograph them. I took almost all of these at my job up at Howe Caverns.

This first one: line. My mind immediately jumped to hand hand railings and how they make your eye follow them through the image. I felt like that was a little overdone, and I wanted something different. Then I remembered there is a spot in the cave called the Winding Way which is carved out by flowing water creating this beautiful flowing lines along the wall. So I went through there and I made an hdr image out of that.

For value I ended up kind of cheating a little bit. I took a picture of of the fog going through the valley and made an HDR out of it, which means I've got the details of the brightest highlights and the detail within the darkest shadows. So my picture ends up covering a wide range of value thanks to computer enhancement.

When walking through the cave, if you use your imagination, you're able to see a lot of different images within the formations. For example I've seen a formation that looks like Godzilla, a Tiki Head, a Moose, ect.. So for shapes the answer was simple. There is a spot on the tour where tour guides will point out a formation where in you can see 3 Witches, which is why it is named The Witches of the Grottos. Due to the lighting, shadows, and shapes in the rock you make out 3 witches. One is easier to see than the others, but if you look closely you'll be able to see the other two. My technique for taking this is the same as all of my cave pictures. I set my camera on a tripod and made three exposures, some lasting over a minute, in order to get a enough light, for use in an hdr.

Form was an easy element to envision, for that I took a picture of two formations. A stalactite and a
stalagmite. The Stalagmite is cylinder in shape while the stalactite behind is more coned shaped.

Space; this one was kind of a fluke. I know I wanted to take this in the cave somewhere and so while I was looking I found a crevasse that goes back in quite a ways, and that's when I knew that would be the one. The whole thing itself is pretty much just space.

Color kind of speaks for itself. I originally was going to find a spot in the cave for color but I thought that this had a better representation of color with it's bright saturated primary and secondary colors.

Texture, again this one is pretty much self explanatory. It has a unique texture to it that makes it look smooth and slimey to touch but rough as you run your finger down it.

I purposely positioned the composition of the Zipline Tower to the side, in order to occupy the rest of the photo with negative space creating somewhat of a balance within the composition.

For Contrast  I took a picture of the truffle rack because I liked how they were isolated on this white background, making the jump from light to dark very steep.

For Movement I kind of used the hand railing and the walkway to my advantage so that your eye follows the path in essence creating movement.

Emphasis is pretty self explanatory in terms of what is emphasized. I used a low f-stop in order get a shallow depth of field and bluring out the background and focusing on the piece of fudge.

For Pattern I used the repetition of the candy bars. I also like how the different colors of the wrappers are able to give a unique variety.

I think that proportion was my biggest challenge. I didn't really know what to photograph for this one. I took a picture of the fountain up in the "Mining" building because it had an overly large fountain, which you can spin actually. It reminded me of the Price is Right where you spin that overly gigantic wheel.


I feel like the last picture best represents unity due to the way the whole piece in converging in to one center location. You're eyes follow the hand rial right down the middle, down the tunnel.

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