Tag: composition

Review: The Art of Black and White Photography

By John Watson
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First of all, let me get something off my chest. I’m not picking on this book in particular, but generally, when will photography book authors quit talking about digital photography like it’s some crazy new thing that people need to be gently introduced to? Why does every photo book have an “introduction to digital” section that is all but useless filler? It’s 2008 people! If I wanted an introduction to digital photograhy, I’d have bought an introduction to digital photography book. Ok, rant over.

Read on to learn more about the book and find out how you can get a free copy.

Mercifully, The Art of Black and White Photography by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann keeps the intro to digital section to a mere 9 pages.

The meat of this book starts in section two. Section two devotes a full chapter to each of many different genres and concepts and attempts to show by example how to make black and white photographs.

Topics include overcoming clichés, architecture, portraits, street photography, and moods. Arguably, these are all topics that apply equally well to color photography.

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The Importance of Focus and Quick Tips on How to Get it Right

By John Watson
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Focus in photography is about a lot more than simply sharpness or being able to see what you are looking at. Focus can enhance a subject by making it stand out from or blend into its surroundings, focus can draw you in, and the right focus can create an emotional connection with the viewer.

No matter what style of photography you enjoy, focus can work for you or against you.

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Learning Composition: The Rule of Thirds

By Nicholas
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Whether you’re feeling artistic or not, good composition is important for making images that resonate with viewers. Everything else being equal, poor composition can create an itch in a viewer—a subconscious and annoying one that can’t be scratched.

Composition in photography refers to the arrangement of elements in an image. Those elements can be subjects, foreground, background, and props. They can also be color, focus, and balance.

rule-of-thirds-1

It can be a difficult concept to grasp which is why people invented “the rule of thirds.” In this article, I will explain everything you need to know about this rule, along with all the examples you will need to become a master at it.

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The making of a “simple” snapshot: a photo essay in four frames

By John Watson
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Last night, as she tucked our son into bed, my lovely and talented wife came into the office in search of the camera. Our conversation went something like this:

Wife: “Where’s the camera? I need to take a picture of your son. How do you get this thing off the tripod?”

Tripod head

Me: “Wait a second. You’re going to need some light.”
Wife: “This is supposed to just be a quick snapshot.”
Me: “Do you want a blurry mess or do you want to be able to see what’s in the photo?” (Set flash to TTL BL, +1 EV, on-camera, oriented to bounce off ceiling and adjacent wall. Camera set to ISO 200, P mode, +0.7 EV)

SB-800 Speedlight

Me: “Oops, you’re going to need some film.”
Wife: Grrr.

Flash memory

Me: “There you go.”
Wife: *Click!*
Me: “Hey, presto!”

Snapshot

Scene and composition: The Lovely and Talented Wife
Camera setup: Me

… Continue reading The making of a “simple” snapshot: a photo essay in four frames

Quick Fix for Cluttered Backgrounds

By Elizabeth West
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Despite all that has been written about keeping the background of your photos simple, that goal is not always achievable. Sometimes your subject is in a place with a busy background everywhere. Or perhaps the subject is doing something that you don’t want to interrupt by walking around the person or requesting that she or he move to a different location.

I have found a very quick solution for such cases. Take the picture you want and then work on the background in Photoshop or another image editing program. First, I crop such images to remove part of the background. That alone makes the background somewhat less intrusive. But often I don’t want to eliminate it entirely; I merely want to de-emphasize it. One quick fix is first to blur the background slightly and then to adjust the saturation of both background and subject.

My brother PeteRecently, my brother came to visit. He and another friend of mine had an animated conversation in my kitchen. These were two very large guys and their expansive gestures and expressions really captured my interest. I grabbed a camera and took a whole series of pictures of them holding their conversation in my cluttered kitchen.

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Super quick (and easy!) tip for more flattering portraits

By John Watson
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One of my goals when I take portraits is to make sure the resulting photograph is flattering to the subject. There are a ton of techniques one can use to improve a portrait from lighting to digital alteration but one of the very best and quickest ways also happens to be one of the easiest. Here are three photos of the same subject taken from three different perspectives (uh, please forgive the model). In the first, the camera was slightly below the subject shooting up, then at eye-level in the second, and finally a few inches above the subject:

BelowEye-levelAbove

It’s clear to me that the last photo is the most flattering. Not only does this perspective make me look thinner, notice that it also opens up the eyes and hides wrinkle-revealing shadows. A few inches of elevation above the subject’s eye-level is all you need.

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Negative Space Can Have a Positive Effect

By Elizabeth West
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Many elements work together to create a pleasing photograph. One such elements is negative space. Negative space is all the space inside the picture that is not the subject. The edges of any picture form a frame for that picture. Within that frame, the subject is considered the positive area; the rest is called negative space.

The word negative is used descriptively; it is not a value judgment. Negative space is not something to be avoided. However, it is something to be considered, because it is an important part of a picture’s composition. It is a design element in your image.

A stencil can help you recognize this importance. Here the subject is the brass object, but the negative space that forms the letter is equally if not more important.

Negative space has several functions. It helps define a subject. In many cases, it also provides a vital element in the design of your image. Since a photo is two-dimensional, the space around a subject appears on the same plane as the subject. Negative and positive spaces are side by side.

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Vary Your Viewpoint

By Elizabeth West
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The term “viewpoint” describes the camera’s position in relation to its subject—near, far, above, below, for instance. Many photographers never change their viewpoint. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they hold their cameras at chest or eye level and shoot straight ahead. Doing so allows them to take clear pictures of buildings, animals, people, plants, cars, and landscapes, so it’s not a bad strategy.

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How to crop a photo for better composition

By Elizabeth West
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In an ideal world, every photo you take would be perfectly composed. However, in real life, many pictures could use some improvement. Often, thoughtful cropping can make the difference between a mediocre image and a better one. Cropping a picture just means eliminating or trimming off edges.

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