Day 22: Capturing perfect symetry

I always admired photos that introduced symmetry. I tried it my self a number of times before. But there was always something that put me off when I looked back at my pictures. Even though the concept was nice, there something not quite there.

The good thing with this whole challenge is that it gives you some tips & tricks in advance to get you started, but encourages you to explore things on your own.

Reading through this week’s tips, I instantly understood what I was doing wrong over and over again in my previous photos.

It’s all about positioning.

It’ all about how you position yourself to correctly frame your subject. Using levels, your in-camera guide and correctly using depth of field to capture the perfect symmetry. Tips such as timing your breathing and using your camera’s viewfinder to stabilize your shot, if you don’t carry a tripod, made a big difference for me.

Now for the challenging part. Finding the right subject. You could argue that you can find symmetrical subjects everywhere you look. That’s true. But I also needed those subjects to be clear of objects blocking my frame, such as road signs, trees, cars and pedestrians.

After hunting for the perfect subject on the streets in London, I ended up snapping a picture of the Center Point building on Tottenham Court Road.

Observing the building from different angles, I found that if you look at it from its base you get the perfect symmetrical angles as there are no obstructions nearby, and the building stands tall in London’s skyline without any other buildings next to it at this hight.

I used high aperture at f/12.0, ISO at 3200 and dropped my shutter speed at 1:50/sec.

When editing the photo, I found that I was a bit off as it’s not 100% symmetrical. If you flip the photo you get a small off balance between the left and right sides. It’s around 95% symmetrical so I’ll take it.

A great exercise which helped me learn a lot of new tricks and techniques.