Composition - Depth Task

Roughs

I chose to move away from my previous theme for visual language and went to the library and took out David Attenborough's Frozen Planet book which had some amazing photographs inside to use as reference material. The focus of my roughs are mainly penguins and polar bears and I was aiming to capture the polar bear stalking and preying on the penguins, or in some cases, just noticing the different animals that inhabit the same space and the relationship between them. 

From these first two pages, I particularly like the composition on the bottom left of the second page because it has a distinct foreground (penguins), mid ground (polar bear on the ice) and background (landscape). I noted that the polar bear in this rough is positioned quite awkwardly so if this is the rough I am going to pursue I will need to work on this. I settled on the idea of having two penguins and one polar bear (or whale in some roughs) to clearly show that the predator is working alone and penguins are rarely by themselves. Using a grid to help me with the rule of thirds is proving useful because I am considering where the main points of interest in my image should be placed. For example, in the rough I was talking about previously, the head of the young penguin is in a hotspot and so is the polar bear. 

I felt I got quite caught up in the viewpoint from which I was drawing from so I wanted to experiment with some other angles. I like the birds eye view (bottom right) of the polar bear swimming after some penguins and the proportions of the frame emphasises the idea of a struggle and a chase. I like the composition in the top left of the fourth page of roughs; I think it makes it interesting how the polar bear takes up the majority of the frame and the penguins are mere dots in the distance. I feel it really emphasises how big the polar bear is and the dominance it has. 

Final Composition

The task had to be completed in pencil crayon only so I decided to push this and only use one pencil crayon for the entire piece. This forced me to consider tone a lot more. I think the blue and white emphasises the cold in the scene and the dark blue of the water makes the ocean look ominous and as if the penguins are huddling for safety. Cropping most of the head off the adult penguin keeps the attention on the vulnerability of the young one. This task has made me think how I should consider cropping more in images I am producing in other modules because it can have a strong effect on an image. I tried to create a diagonal line with the edge of the ice, from the penguins head to the bottom right corner - I'm not sure whether this is actually noticeable but my aim was for the lines of the ice to lead towards the head of the penguin, therefore drawing more attention to it.