MC Ramblings

Composition

Last week we talked about how subjective good and bad are in relation to photography.  Today we are going to start to break down some things for you to think about and try to improve your photos.

To be able to make outstanding photos you have to SEE them first.  I believe that our ability to see photos is mostly a learned activity like language.  And like a language it is easier to learn it young.  I think the environment you experienced as a small child affects your ability to see now.  The visual language of photography is learnable at any age but like learning Spanish it is easier if you start young.   Some people take great photos with no training.  I don’t think this is something they were born with but is a result of childhood experiences that taught them to SEE. I think these folks received the training as children.  Now what that training is I have not a clue.  Has to be something about the environment you grow up in. 

That said you can learn to take better pictures at any age and we have many tips to help you do so.  The first and one of the most important things is composition.  If you think of photography, painting, and any other visual art forms as a language than composition is the grammar of that language.  Your point of view is your “thought” and composition is how you form the “sentence” that is the photo.

Here is a list of some compositional elements;

Selective focus

Color/tone

Texture

Framing

“Rule of Thirds”

Lines

Curves

Patterns

These elements are usually present to some extent in all the pictures we look at that we like. 

What I like to do is to look at each individually and have people deliberately make pictures using one of these elements as the primary focus of your pictures.

The first one we will deal with is the so-called “Rule of Thirds”.  Like all of these elements this is not really a “rule” but more of a guide.  It derives it name from 17^th century art theorists who studied art back to the Greeks and were very fond of declaring rules and the like.  It comes from ancient Greek mathematics and art that used something called the “Golden Ratio”.  This was supposed to assure pleasing proportions to things and was derived from a very real mathematics constant.  The Greeks and the art theorists were very fond of explaining art in terms of mathematical rules.  They thought that art could be defined quite systematically.  Probably not right but the theories can help you take better pictures. 

This rule tells you to divide the picture space into thirds both horizontally and vertically.  You than place the center of interest of you photo at one of the intersections of these lines. 

The example below from Wikipedia shows what a difference this can make in the impact of your photo.  If you click on the picture it will show you the lines.  I can't get the animated gif to work here.

 

 Now look at this photo, how would you improve it using the rule of thirds? 

 

Go out this week and think about this rule while shooting.  Let me know if you think it helps you.

It is a pain to think about this stuff at first but after a while it becomes uncouncious just like language.  How often do you thing of where to place the subject and the verb in a sentence before you speak?   These compositional elements should become like that when you make photos.

Dave 

Photo Blog Late

The photo post will be late.  It will be up by noon Central time on Saturday. 

Improving Your Photography

To really become a better photographer it helps to understand what a good photograph is.  Using the patented DGP photo rating scale you can precisely determine how good any particular photo is.  NOT.  How good is a photo?  That’s almost entirely subjective. 

Let’s look at some examples.  This site has a selection of Ansel Adams prints. Moonrise   Look at the third one down, Moonrise Hernadez, New Mexico.  There is no way your monitor is doing this print justice but you can still see what a wonderful picture it is.  It has everything, sharp as a razor, tons of detail, nice composition, wonderful, magical light, fantastic tonal range (we’ll discuss this later), it is stunning and if I had a spare $600,000 bucks I would love to have it hanging on my wall.   It is regarded as one of the finest photos ever taken.

Now look at this these   Death of a Soldier (there is ongoing controversy about the reality of this picture.  I think it is real) and D-Day

These are out of focus, have motion blur, poor tonal range, lousy light and are also regarded as some of the greatest photos ever taken.  How can all these be good photos?

See what I mean about subjective?

What is good is partly dependent on what you are trying to do.  This is one of the very fundamental things you need to learn.   We can go over all the things needed to improve you photography but the absolute most important thing is WHAT DO YOU WANT THE PHOTO TO SAY?  This is your point of view.  I don’t care if you want to show the stunning beauty of nature, the cruelty of war, how cool you bike is or how nice your daughter looks in her prom dress.  You need to have a reason for taking the photo and an idea of what you want the final product to say.  

So that is your first assignment; tell me what you want your pictures to say. 

Second assignment, and this is something you should be doing every day forever, LOOK AT PICTURES.  What was the photog trying to say or do with the photo, what was the point of view.   What do you like about the picture?  What don’t you like?  Would you have done something different?  As we progress we can talk more about what techniques were used but you all have some knowledge already so try and figure out the light, the composition, etc.

There are lots of good pictures out there.  Sports Illustrated runs the three they think are the best of the week  at the front of the magazine every week.  Look at the news magazines, your daily paper,  a really good source of fine pictures are the fashion magazines like Elle and GQ.  May not be your usual fair but the ones like Elle are full of beautiful women so they are pretty easy to look at.  Tell you wife it is an assignment! 

You really must STUDY to get better and just like following Chris Carr around at a Supercamp you will learn but studying what the best are doing. 

Dave

Buell History Posts

The blog is going to feature Buell History posts on Mondays with other interesting stuff during the week. 

This is Buell history as I remember it; any connection to the truth is purely coincidence.   

I will occasionally do a improve your photo post but not on a regular schedule. 

Dave