Illustration of a Theme - Tranquility

These set of photos were taken around the theme of tranquility. Setting a theme for photographs enables you to gain inspiration and makes ideas much easier to brainstorm.

The first thing that came to my mind when I was brainstorming around the word "tranquility" was peacefulness. What do I find peaceful? Where do I go and what do I do when I want to relax? My first thought was the canals in Birmingham near to where I live as this area always has that peaceful vibe from the water and the boats floating in front of you. This for me was a good place to start. From there I just went for a walk around central Birmingham. Now being a city, it can obviously be quite busy in the streets, but I was able to find places where it takes the business out of the city whilst still being within the city.

I found that there were places where people would sit on the grass or benches to relax during there lunch breaks. Thats where the photographs of the church were taken so I attempted to capture that atmosphere in that area.

In the post processing aspect, I wanted to use the use of colour to express this theme further. I had this in mind when taking the photos also.

Blue is the colour that represents tranquility so I took pictures focussing on the sky (luckily for me it wasn't too cloudy and sunny) and the water of the canals. My main editing tool for these sets of pictures were the camera raw filter which helps you define your images to make them look more definite. Here I was also able to to make the photographs more blue, but be careful not to make everything in the images blue!

I was concerned that my photos would look depressing as the colour blue also represents sadness, so I took shots where their was also a splash of colour to break that up.

When using a theme as the concept of your set of photos, allows you to see things in a way that you didn't before. You can be as simple or as metaphorical as you'd like. Not only does a theme make you use your imagination, but it also gives you an aim and a goal as to how you would like your images to turn out.