I will begin my first series of “how to take pictures”, trying to share what I have learned.
What does it take to take a good picture? For sure, it requires more than a solid knowledge of camera’s various controls and settings. If that were all that is needed, anyone who had read a camera manual could be a great photographer, including me.
Unfortunately, taking good pictures demands creativity and a touch of artistry along a solid understanding of the rules of photographic composition and practical experience of when it’s okay to break the rules.
Photography composition
Composition is all about arranging the subjects in a picture and the ability to translate into a photo what is in your mind’s eye. The camera “sees” things very differently, and in order to take great photographs one must have to understand and learn how to see the world the way camera “sees” it.
Only through an understanding of composition the images will go from snapshots to potential works of art.
Why composition is so important?
All of us have been on vacation, seeing a picturesque view, pulled out the camera, and then been disappointed with the final results.
There are some reasons why what the camera “sees” is different from what our eyes see.
Our eyes aren’t just some lens and integrated circuits, all that we see is enhanced and interpreted by our brain and some of the beauty of the scene is added by our mind. Unfortunately, what we see in the viewfinder is what we get, without any enhancing.
A good example of how the eye sees different than the camera. The sky in my mind was a nice blue and the reflexion was not so obvious, I could barely notice it.
Rules of composition
Isolate the focal point
The focal point is the main point of interest that the viewer’s eye is drawn to when looking at one picture.
Always must be determined who or what is actually the focal point of the picture then the photo must be planed accordingly. Usually the single biggest problem with photographs taken by new photographers is that they fail to consider what their subject actually is. When you don’t know what you’re taking a picture of, it’s hard to emphasize that element in the final composition. That leads to muddy, confused arrangements in which there is nothing specific for the viewer to look at.
When the subject is too expansive to be considered a focal point then is recommended to add a secondary focal point.
As a general rule, is wanted a single focal point in the photograph. More than one main subject is distracting, and viewers won’t really know where to look. If you see a photograph in which several objects have equal visual weight, you probably won’t like it, even though you may not be sure why. It is certainly possible to include multiple focal points in an image, but this should be done with care.
Rule of thirds
The rule of thirds is the single most important rule of photography that must be learned and applied.
“Here’s what you should do: in your mind, draw two horizontal and two vertical lines through your viewfinder so that you have divided each plane—the horizontal and the vertical—into thirds. In other words, your image should be broken into nine zones with four interior corners where the lines intersect. It is these corners that constitute the “sweet spots” in your picture. If you place something—typically the focal point—in any of these intersections, you’ll typically end up with an interesting composition.
This really, really is the golden rule of photography. Thumb through a magazine. Open a photography book. Watch a movie. No matter where you look, you will find that professional photographers follow the rule of thirds about 75 percent of the time. And while the rule of thirds is very easy to do, you may find that it is somewhat counterintuitive. “
Dave Johnson, How to do everything with your digital camera
Many people, including me at the beginning, try to put the focal point of their picture dead smack in the middle of the frame.
And the experts are telling that “there are few things in life more boring than looking at a picture in which the subject is always right in the middle”. Fortunately, for many of us, some of the new cameras have the option to display the grid so you are not challenged to draw lines in your mind.
Fill the frame
Essentially, this rule says that the amount of dead space in a photograph should be minimized. Once the focal point of the image is decided there’s absolutely no reason to place it to a small portion of the picture. Get closer, use the zoom , walk over to it! Whatever is needed to do, do it, in order to keep the focal point from being a small part of the overall image.
to be continued
part2
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