Composition

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Composing Your Photos Within The Lines

Monday, December 6th, 2010

While preparing our teaching project for the upcoming Design4Kids workshop in Honduras – just a month away now – the concept of design elements came up. While most of the kids there have already been introduced to the basics, we realized that it would be quite valuable to review them and demonstrate how universal these elements are in all design and art – both two- and three-dimensional.

An experienced photographer has likely internalized the concepts of line, shape, form, color and tone and while we may not consciously focus on them when crafting our image, you’re constantly aware of them at a subconscious level. Reviewing them from time to time is valuable to refresh your conscious awareness and to stimulate your creative thought process.

If you’re new to photography realize that these essential elements of design are the building blocks you use to create dynamic, compelling photographs.

Let’s take them individually, and the best way to become completely comfortable with these ideas is to practice them by focusing on using them in your photos.

A single Point is the most elemental design component. Not often found in photographing the real world, we’ll talk a bit more about point in future discussions on Shape.

As soon as you introduce two or more points, you create a Line, and this is by far the most common and basic element we encounter in designing photographs.

Lines can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, straight or curved. And they can be an actual line, such as a horizon, the edge of a wall or table, or implied lines such as the placement of two objects and the way the eye is drawn from one to the other.

Horizontal and vertical lines tend to create a sense of stability, of foundation and strength. Diagonal lines are much more dynamic, creating a sense of movement ant drawing your viewer’s eye through your photo and to your subject.

Converging diagonals give a visual impression of depth and of being present in the image. They reinforce the sense of scale you have in the real world, where objects closer to you appear larger than those farther away.

And curving lines give a feeling of motion and a graceful path through your picture.

Paying attention to lines and how they affect your viewer’s interest in your photo causes a much more emotional connection.

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Composing For The Greatest Impact

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

As we come into the holiday season this is the time all the cameras come out to record those hapy family get-togethers. And with a little thought, those photos of family and friends can be much more interesting than the too often seen straight-on, quick grab snapshot.

A common tendency I see among beginning photographers is to point the camera at what they want to take a photo of, center the subject in the frame and take the picture. The thing is, a dead-centered composition is often not the best choice. While it may get the job done of recording the subject, there’s likely to be little else there to capture and hold the viewer’s imagination

With all visual art, which includes photography, the movement of the viewer’s eye through the image has a lot to do with creating energy and emotional involvement. And THAT’s what makes your pictures unforgettable.

One of the oldest compositional concepts in art is the ‘Rule of Thirds”. Very simply, it says that you “draw” two vertical lines on your image to divide it into equal thirds vertically, and also two horizontal lines to divide it into equal thirds horizontally. Some cameras even have a setting which will project this grid on your LCD and/or viewfinder.

The ideal place to locate your subject(s) is where these lines intersect. This creates a more effective balance in your image and helps cause the viewer’s eye to move thorough the picture instead of staying in one spot, saying “OK, I’ve seen what there is to see” and moving on to something else.

One important thing – remember to think of the Rule of Thirds more as a “suggestion” than a “rule”. The use of lines, shapes, color, tone and of course the subject itself all affect how the eye navigates your picture and causes the viewer to become involved as well. We’ll look at all of these individually in upcoming installments.

Posted in Cameras, Candids, Composition, Creativity, Digital Photography, Learning Photography, Portrait, Uncategorized | No Responses »
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Photo Classes In Honduras

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

After a delayed flight leg from Houston, Eric and I arrived in Guatemala City at about 10:00pm Monday.  Checked into our hotel (the Barcelo – quite nice) at about 11:00pm, checked out at 4:00am to get to the bus station – making our stay about $20 an hour!

Tuesday was an all-day bus ride from Guatemala City to La Ceiba, Honduras. Fourteen hours, with a bus change and layover of 2 hours in San Pedro, Honduras. Met our cab driver in La Ceiba and took the 45-minute ride up the dirt road to Las Mangas.

After disembarking in San Pedro my iphone was “disappeared” – slipped out of my pocket in the seat, and I was off the bus before I realized it. A “search” by the bus service personnel turned up nothing. Mysteriously I was not allowed back on to look for myself.

So much for keeping in touch by email – all of my contacts were on the phone, not yet in this new computer. Hopefully I’ll be able to restore everything from the backup when I return and get a replacement.

The next two days were spent teaching photo classes to the students at Guaruma, the school project here. Originally started as a photography school for the children in Las Mangas, the project now has expanded to include environmental awareness studies and English, and has a second location about 5 kilometers farther up the mountain in El Pital.

The project we created for the kids was a simulated magazine cover, to teach the students awareness of shooting pictures for a specific format and subject, and then laying out the cover with their photos in Photoshop.

Wednesday we met up with Guaruma’s assistant director, Chris Poliquin and the school’s English teacher, Erin Coutts. That day we worked with the students in Las Mangas, and the theme of their assignment was “form and color in nature”. We took a walk along the nature trails that Guaruma maintains up the road and across the river just outside town. CB

The kids here are very much into macro photography, and their sensitivity and awareness of their environment is great to see. A few leaves on the jungle floor become a carefully composed still life, often displaying the subtle interplay of muted greens and browns, other times exploding in the vibrant colors of jungle flowers.

And insects – Oui! They have a critical eye for the smallest creature resting on a leaf or poised on the end of a branch, and work their subjects like a fashion photographer working with their model. Incredible shots of what others might think of as mundane and perhaps something to be dismissed and avoided.

After shooting their photos, we returned to the school where they loaded them onto the computers and learned how to combine the images in Photoshop into a template Eric created as the cover layout.

Then they played with changing type colors and fonts, moving type around the page, and learned how working with layers simplifies so many things. The students were excited to discover what they could do in the program and quickly realized how these techniques could be used with other projects.

Thursday we went up the road to El Pital and worked with the students up there. Neither of these “towns” are even wide spots in the road, but El Pital is a bit more “rustic”. There’s no nature trail there and the focus of their shoot was portraiture of the townspeople.

After some pointers on the do’s – and don’ts – of taking people pictures along with an explanation of how to shoot for a specific format, we unleashed this gaggle of paparazzi on the town.

While a few held back and preferred the comfort of using each other as subjects, most were quick to engage people they met (of course in this town, everyone knows each other) and ask to take their picture. Most were willing subjects and enjoyed working with the kids.

After corralling everyone and herding them back to the classroom, the kids went through the same process of putting their photos into the “cover” template. This group was a bit less computer-savvy than the Las Mangas kids, but nonetheless picked up the concepts and techniques pretty quickly.

This project gives the students an opportunity to learn practice skills that they’ll be able to apply to all of their photography as they move forward in developing their skills.

Posted in Cameras, Candids, Composition, Creativity, Digital Photography, Learning Photography, photography workshops, Photoshop, Portrait, Travel | No Responses »
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Design4Kids IV Photo & Graphic Design Workshop

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

The fourth Design4Kids workshop begins June 17th in Santiago de Atitlan, Guatemala. This one has been dubbed “The Master Class” and will be made up of the senior students of previous workshops. In addition to classes in photography and graphic design, we’ll have a stronger emphasis on marketing and small business practices ready to be applied to Jakaramba, the design studio born of the workshops and our parent group, FotoKids.

All of the members of the Jakaramba studio will be participating in the workshop. Up to now their clients have been primarily local and regional non-profit organizations, and they’ve worked on smaller projects. We hope they’ll come away from the workshop with a clear direction for the studio and a solid marketing plan, ready to take their business to the next level.

The client for this workshop will be FotoKids itself, and the project a self-published book to be used for promotion and fund-raising. Plans for the he book are to include an overview of the Fotokids project, feature photographs by FotoKids students, and to touch on the beauty and challenges of Guatemala.

Additional customizable chapters will include bios on individual students, coverage of the Design4Kids project and a look at Jakaramba.

Instructors for this workshop will be Design4Kids director Jeff Speigner, teaching graphic design, Cathy Shea teaching marketing, and Eric Lollkema and myself teaching photography. I’ll also be working with Cathy to interject the small business, target marketing approach with her big business marketing skills and experience.

Eric and I will be arriving a week early and making a side trip to Honduras, where we’ll be teaching photo classes for several days at Guaruma, the Honduras branch of Fotokids.

An interesting side note I’ve recently learned is that while it is currently the rainy season in Guatemala, with moderate temperatures and daily storms, Honduras, right next door but on the Caribbean coast, is in their dry season, with hot sunny days and temps near 100! Quite a climate variance in a area the size of the Carolinas!

Check in regularly – I’ll be providing periodic updates during the trip – internet connections permitting.

Posted in Cameras, Composition, Creativity, Digital Photography, Landscape, Learning Photography, photography workshops, Photoshop, Travel | No Responses »
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Shooting in a Winter Wonderland

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Some of the advantages of living in the Mid-Atlantic region are the tremendous variety of recreational opportunities, from mountains to beaches and rivers and everything in between, the beautiful bounty of spring and fall, warm sultry summers.

And oh yeah – fairly short and relatively mild winters . . .

The day after our record-breaking second top-ten snowstorms in the same year, my own little corner of the world is doing pretty well.

Spent Saturday during the storm tackling the shoveling an hour at a time so that by the end of the day when the snow stopped everything was cleared out to the road. Then, about 7:00pm, much to my surprise the plow came through and cleared our street! (I was expecting it today, maybe tomorrow.)

A planned 15 minute photo walk around the block turned into an hour long meet all the neighbors you never know walk, as everyone says “hi” and welcomes the opportunity to take a break from shoveling. Events like this tend to bring people together.

Meanwhile my cleared driveway is now wet as the sun, even at 25 degrees or so, melts all the ice from the surface. And it was only 11:30. By 2:00 it’s dry pavement!

Streets are still covered in a thin sheet of snow, will probably take another day to dry up. Tomorrow’s forecast for above freezing temps, so that should speed things up. But these head-high snow banks are going to be around for a while.

Called my client in Virginia Beach hoping they had just gotten rain out of all this, but they got a couple of inches of snow. Not a lot, but enough that they don’t want their big beach-front home photographed in it. Maybe by the end of the week.

A rare event like this gives an opportunity to get photos that are otherwise simply unavailable. This will give me a little extra for the classes starting this week!

Wherever you’re reading this from, remember, you typically want to over-expose from what your meter tells you by about one stop in snow. And think about your white balance – deep shadows and overcast light tend to make things go blue pretty quickly. You can either adjust for it, or let it go and use it creatively.

Get out there and shoot now. You can’t get these shots in the middle of summer!

Posted in Architecture, Cameras, Composition, Creativity, Digital Photography, Landscape, Learning Photography | No Responses »
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Photography at the Washington Auto Show

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Just finished a week of photography covering the Washington Auto Show. This assignment is for the client who produces the show itself, and is largely public relations oriented. We shoot the special events that go on during the show, as well as the day-to-day activities, the public enjoying the auto displays, checking out the new cars.

In some ways PR photography can be one of the most challenging to make interesting, as the subject is often someone speaking at a podium in front of a group. Sometimes the speaker is the shot – a notable who’s presence is the newsworthy event. Other times having the speaker in context with a display showing the topic of his talk helps provide creative elements for a photo.

In one of the more interesting displays at this show, one of the auto makers had a cut-away car with the body shell split down the middle. The two halves spread open revealing the interior, frame, engine and all the insides of the car. The show attendees could get in the car, with a product specialist, and the body closed, all while the specialist described the many features of the vehicle.

It looked great, and would have been an easy capture in video, but getting still photos that described the process provided a bit of a challenge. Open, the body halves and interior looked like a static display, and closed it just looked like a car. A single shot of the vehicle closing still looked like a static display.

I used post processing in Photoshop to help solve this one. I set up the camera on a steady tripod, and did a series of shots. The first was the display open, with the people inside. I then shot several exposures of the car closing, until it was completely closed. Each individual shot looked like this:

 

I first tried using the PhotoMerge tool to see what happened, but as I suspected it would, it just ended up with the open and closed frames merged together.

 I then opened each photo in Photoshop, and one at a time dragged each successive shot onto the next. I created a Layer Mask and with a low opacity brush erased some of the area where the car was closing in the underlying frame. That was flattened and dragged onto the next closing frame, and the process repeated. The final image looks like this:

This is a process very similar to the one I use when combining exposures of architectural interiors, and with a little practice it’s actually quite simple. The students who take my classes discover that it’s simpler and quicker to do this than to describe it!

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Two Weeks of Photo Classes!

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Wow, it’s been a busy week, with another coming right along.

Last Saturday started it off with the Kids & Parents Photo Class. The introductory class was geared toward the kids – 11 to 15 year olds – and the parents came along to share the experience and learn alongside each other. Of course, with today’s tech-savvy kids, it’s likely that they were explaining it again to the parents that evening!

We went over the basics of using their cameras – point & shoots – and a little on light and composition. Next we all went outside and practiced what they learned. Then we came back in the classroom and looked at some photo editing techniques, using software like Google’s Picasa.

The parents told me that the kids went home and took photos all afternoon!

That was followed up during the week with the first of two Home Photography Clinics, this one held in Potomac, Maryland, aimed at professionals in the real estate industry who take their own photos for their listings.

While I still make my living as an architectural photographer, it’s obvious that every photo of every home on the market doesn’t justify a budget of hiring a professional like myself. Many clients over the years have asked about how to take better photos themselves, so I’ve put together a two-day workshop to teach some tips and techniques for improving their photos, without all the expensive and complex equipment that I use.

We started with camera basics – many people at this level are using their cameras on the totally automatic settings, and just taking the camera off “the green” and learning how to control it yourself goes a long way towards improving your results.

We talked a bit about equipment – at least an entry-level SLR is really best – plus adding a wide angle lens and a hot shoe flash to allow bouncing and diffusing light.

And of course using a tripod! I’m a big proponent of using a tripod for just about any photo situation you can. It makes it much easier to get sharp pictures in any condition, and frees you up from worrying about too-slow shutter speeds and too-high and noisy ISO’s.

Then we talked about the qualities and colors of light, and how they all play a key role in the success of a photo. Light should always be the first consideration, not an afterthought.

We followed that up with a look at some basics of composition and design elements, like the Rule of Thirds and using lines – especially the power of diagonal lines – to move the eye through the picture and capture the viewer’s attention.

The first day finished up with some considerations and techniques especially useful for architectural-type shooting. We talked about perspective distortion and parallel lines. And about how to tame the typical ultra-high contrast lighting situations found when photographing interiors.

The second day began with the participants practicing the techniques learned on day one. I hold the workshops in a house to give the students an opportunity to try these techniques right away and ask questions.

Finally we went over some very useful post processing methods that make life in the digital age so much easier.

Shooting in RAW is the first thing to consider to make the process of adjusting images on the computer easier and more efficient. This is another reason for choosing an SLR – even most of the entry level models have RAW capture, while only some advanced digital and few point & shoots allow this.

White balancing an interior space illuminated by mixed light sources can be a time-consuming and complicated task with film and even when shooting JPEGS in camera. With Raw processing it becomes a one-click process, with maybe a little slider adjustment to fine tune things. True, some RAW processing software like Adobe Camera Raw allows white balance adjustments on JPEGS, but this feature is often not found on the more economical entry-level programs.

While critical perspective control is still best done with specialty PC lenses (or a view camera), the ability to quickly adjust for keystoning in programs like Photoshop will instantly take photos of both exteriors and interiors up to a level far above the average real estate listing snapshots.

And the ability to bracket exposures and combine them in post-processing is a tremendously useful means of overcoming too-contrasty lighting conditions. With a bit of practice it soon becomes a quick and simple method of taming extreme highlights and shadows, without the greater learning curve and specialty software required for true HDR images.

Everyone who participated was truly excited to start using their new-found skills, and this week we’ll repeat the workshop with another group in Northern Virginia. Those students are already calling with eager questions and requests!

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Design4Kids III Photo-Design Workshop An Overwhelming Success

Monday, December 21st, 2009

The workshop pace picked up on Friday and into Saturday, culminating in the presentation of the project designs to the client, Hospitalito Atitlan. The client was blown away! The group came up with five different potential designs, and the hospital is trying to decide which one to use. They are all outstanding works.

After the client presentation just about everyone relaxed at a party along the lakefront. Unfortunately, it was about that time that some evil bug got hold of me. I won’t go into details on the chills and my other experiences of the afternoon and evening – let’s just say the bug had me confined to quarters for the duration, and I missed the party and the final dinner that evening.

What a great group though – after the dinner everyone came up to my room to check on me and say goodbye. We really come together like a family at these workshops, and the last day is an emotional mix of elation over the success of the week and the sadness that it’s over.Santiago Christmas Tree

After a long day of travel on Sunday I arrived back home in Maryland, and picked right up on Monday where I had left off on shooting an annual report for one of my clients. Then, just to really make the point that I wasn’t in Guatemala anymore. The now famous “Blizzard of 2009” embraced us this weekend here in the Mid-Atlantic.

What a dichotomy – one Saturday walking through Santiago as Christmas festivities were in full swing, complete with a palm-leaf tree in the town square. The next, just a week later, buried in 20” of snow!

It makes the prospect of the next Design4Kids workshop in June that much more inviting. We’re considering a “Master Class” for the more advanced, experienced Fotokids. Keep tuned here and at www.Design4Kids for more to come on this workshop. And if you have the talents and experience to share – in photography, graphic design, marketing, entrepreneurship –  seriously consider in joining us as a volunteer mentor. There’s no way I can fully describe the incredible fulfillment and richness of emotion that comes from working with these kids.

Feel free to contact me for more info.

Posted in Candids, Composition, Creativity, Digital Photography, Learning Photography, photography workshops, Travel | No Responses »
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Depth of Field and Fill Flash

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Santiago-45Back in the classroom this morning with an explanation of depth of field and using the aperture for creative control. We worked with “the girls” today on the photography side – it just happens that the girls in the group have less photo training, while the boys are more experienced, and we’ve divided the class into beginners and advanced.

After a short in-class presentation and a few examples, we went outside and practiced the techniques – definitely the best way to really learn and understand how to do it. Everyone loves the opportunity to play and experiment with the camera.

Then back inside for the next lesson – fill flash. We did double photo sessions with the same group today while the other group was doing screen printing on the graphic design side, and will do the same tomorrow with the boys working with us on photography.

It was a natural segue from aperture to understanding the use of fill flash both indoors and outside. It’s natural for beginners to simply use flash as the primary light source and blast away. Once you see the subtle natural results from balancing flash with available light, you really begin to get excited about the possibilities for creative control.

The kids really got into shooting photos of each other with the flash – they played like paparazzi and stars! This group is an amazingly talented bunch of kids, and they devour every new concept we present them.

The afternoon was project work. The concepts are set and the posters are really coming along. Only a day and a half before they present the final designs to the client.

Tomorrow we’ll see how the boys do with depth of field and fill flash. The girls have set the bar!

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Introducing The Principles of Exposure

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

D4K3 003We began the day with the less experienced kids in the group, and introduced them to the basics of exposure control – aperture, shutter and ISO, and the relationships between them. These kids have worked with digital point & shoot cameras and have a respectable grounding in composition, and this shows them how to get consistent, predictable results in their photos.

We had them shoot a bracket from -2 to +2 and then showed them how to import their images into Lightroom and make adjustments to their photos, recovering much of their under- and over-exposed frames.

It’s exciting to see the lights come on when the concepts sink in and they “get it”. Ana, one of the girls from “the city” (as Guatemala City is know down here) observed that the shot she liked best wasn’t the “correct” metered exposure – recognizing that having the skills to control the exposure allows you to interpret your image the way you visualize the final result.

Next we repeated the two classes with the more experienced members of the group. While most of them claimed to understand the use of aperture and shutter, it was clear that they all had only a little experience in applying the concepts of manual exposure control in their photos. Once they realized what they really can do by making the camera do what they want, they got totally into the process as well.

Tomorrow is an “excursion day” – no structured classes, but rather a creative play day, with activities that allow the kids to apply and practice the concepts and techniques they’re learning this week. Can’t wait to see what they come up with!

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