Mystery photos
Let’s investigate. Mysterious, mysterious!
Are you all set now? Not afraid to cut up your subjects into pieces and dare to frame them in more interesting and original ways?!
Let’s continue on this path!
See these beautiful pictures I took?
In a few moments, I am going to reveal my secret to you and you, too, will be able to create beautiful, mysterious pictures. But first, you have to look for some evidence.
- 1. Can you guess what the four subjects are that I photographed here?
- 2. Even if you can’t really tell what the subjects are, how would you say I cropped them? Where do the subjects touch the frame?
Try to solve the riddle before you turn the page!
Deductions. A variety of subjects
Did you recognize them? My mystery photos are closeups of a shell, a banana leaf, an onion, and some jam!
In the mystery photos (turn back to the previous page to look at them again if you need a refresher), each subject touches the frame . . . everywhere! Each subject is cropped at every corner and every edge of the frame!
Strategy. Deep-inside framing
I used “deep-inside” framing here to allow me to make these pictures so mysterious. For this kind of framing, all you have to do is crop your subject on ALL sides. The picture shouldn’t show the edges of the subject nor anything around it! It’s easier to do if your subject is reasonably large.
With this kind of framing, you can’t tell what shape the subject is. All you are photographing is its color, its texture, and its details—you go “deep inside”! The picture looks a little like a painting. Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what the subject is, and it becomes a mystery photo!
See how surprising the coded document that corresponds to a deep-inside frame is.
This time the subject touches the frame everywhere and all you can see is pink!
The all-green coded document on page 88 had NO subject. This one has ONLY the subject!
Picture quest. A piece of clothing is the star!
Lay one of your favorite pieces of clothing on your bed, a chair, or the floor, close to a window, if possible. Take a picture of it without showing the edge of it (or anything around it). Just frame the fabric itself, maybe with some buttons, part of a pocket, some stitching, or another detail.
Considering the evidence. Material photos, mystery photos!
These new pieces of evidence will help you to understand our strategy even better and to find ideas for subjects that you can make mysterious.
Connect each of these mystery photos to its corresponding wider view. Write your report on a piece of paper!
The answers are:
A5, B2, C6, D1, E3, F4.
If you weren’t able to match up some of the pairs, go back now to find where the “mystery zone” is located in each of the numbered pictures.
Picture quest. Now you create the riddle!
Your mission is to create mystery photos!
- 1. Look for subjects that are not too small and that are made out of interesting materials: plants with large leaves, doors and walls that are a little run-down, large stones, fruits, vegetables, cookies, bread . . .
- 2. Take pictures of your subjects without showing their edges. Get close to them so that you can take extreme closeups (think of the macro mode on page 5)!
- 3. Get your family or friends to guess the subjects of your pictures!
There! Phase A of the project is now finished! You have met the challenge of framing with talent. Good for you!
We have chased away pesky intruders and learned how to choose what subjects and parts of subjects we want to keep in our frame. In a nutshell, we have sifted our material and only kept what we really like.
And after the sifting comes the organizing! In photography, we call this composition. It means organizing our subjects in the picture in such a way that the picture is neat and orderly and you can find everything in it. And that is phase B of our plan of attack!