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THE
FIVE MINUTE PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE
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"EVERYTHING THAT YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY"
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These are the basic "principals of composition". Each one of
these principals should flash through your mind for every photo or potential
photograph that you are about to make.
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- Before you take the
picture, ask yourself why am I taking this picture? Try to identify
what it was that attracted you to this subject. Is it something that
stirs your emotions, or is it the interplay of light and shadows, or the
relationship between your subject and its surroundings? Whatever it is,
you should be able to identify it before making your photograph.
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- Use the rule of
thirds as a starting point in the overall composition. Position your
subjects and elements carefully in the frame, at or near the
intersecting points of the grid to draw attention to the primary
subjects.
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- Look at the tones
in the picture and their placement throughout the picture space. Do
they enhance the subject, or distract from it.
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- What are the
colours in your picture? What mood do they convey? Are any of the
colours in the image competitive with the subject or do they enhance it.
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- Try not to include
everything in a scene, rather distill the essence of the scene with
a few of its main components and include only them. Many times these
basic rules are followed yet the resulting photographs fail because of
unwanted and unnoticed distracting elements.
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- Watch out for
distracting backgrounds. The worst case of this is, the telephone
pole coming out of someone's head. When you are looking through the
viewfinder ignore the subject, check the background is it distracting or
too busy?
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- Consider the camera
orientation (vertical/horizontal). One may work better than the
other. So many people take nothing but horizontal photos, just because
that's the easiest way to operate the camera controls.
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- Run your eye around
the frame of the viewfinder, making sure that there aren't any
objects creeping into the picture.
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- Camera position
and viewpoint. Walk around your subject looking at it from as many
different viewpoints as possible. This will help you to determine which
focal length of lens to use.
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- Keep your horizon
line level especially when working with horizons that are level in
nature such as oceans, seas, and lakes.
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- Add something to
the foreground. Landscape and scenic photographs may be greatly
enhanced by having something such as a flower, rocks, a tree stump, tree
in the foreground. Be certain that both the foreground and the main
subject are in focus.
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- Use leading
diagonal lines and curves to draw the viewer's eye into the image
and to the main subject, for example, a path leading into a field.
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- Watch for the
amount of negative space in your composition. Too much will create
an imbalance, where the eye drifts off of the main subject into the void
of nothingness. Too little can compress the subject within the
composition and reduce its impact and balance. It's really your own way
of seeing or how you feel about the subject that will determine what
you'll do.
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- Look for patterns
in nature and man-made objects. They often create appealing images
all by themselves, for example, ripples in sand, sumac leaves, water
ripples, a stand of trees, columns in the front of a building, office
windows on a skyscraper.
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- Try framing the
subject with a simple arrangement of interesting components around
or beside the main subject, such as between trees, or branches of a
tree(s) coming into the picture. This technique works well to break up a
large area of empty sky as well as creating the illusion of depth in the
photograph.
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- Do you really
need to include the sky in your photo? It could distract from your
subject. If you need to include it maybe you can get away with just
using a sliver of sky.
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- Choose an aperture
that produces the necessary depth of field. Use the depth of field
preview lever (button) to judge the effect before making the exposure.
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- Choose a shutter
speed that controls motion. Do you want freeze the motion, or
intentionally create a blurring movement?
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- Sometimes you just
have to walk away without making a photograph. Maybe the light isn't
right - the background is too distracting - you couldn't get the right
the angle, whatever, there are a lot of different reasons why a
photograph won't work. If you think about the above principals before
releasing the shutter, you just might not!
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