Читать книгу The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos - Marc Silber - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThe Oxford American Dictionary defines composition as, “the artistic arrangement of the parts of a picture.”
Always keep in mind that composition means how you arrange your subject within the frame of your camera in a way that best tells your story.
Also note that when I say “camera” I’m referring to any type
of usual camera or smartphone (you’ll see many of my photos
in the book were taken with an iPhone which I noted in the caption.) Almost all cameras produce a rectangular image, but a few are square.
You’re the captain of the ship when it comes to composition: you have an enormous number of choices for placing your subject within the frame of your camera and one of the adventures of photography is discovering new ways to do that creatively. My goal is to help you do so easily, even intuitively, by practicing with these tools.
As a note, whenever you hear or see the phrase “take” Photos, I’d rather you think of it as creating them.
The following are your 83 guides or tools for composition. You’ll be able to find many more, but I’m giving you the main ones that will get you rolling, and leave it to you to keep discovering more.
Also remember that, like basic ingredients that I mentioned, these too can be combined in different creative ways. Keep in mind that many of the examples I will show you are components of composition, and some of them on their own may not seem “amazing” but when you add them to your tool kit and put them to work you’ll find they become very handy in developing your eye.
Going back to the kitchen, when learning to cook you take up each part of a meal up separately. For example: when learning to make a basic omelet, it might not be much to sing about by itself, but it then becomes “amazing” when you add the other ingredients (cheese, onions, sauces, etc.) when chosen well.
But let’s begin by learning each on its own.
I’m going to take these tools up, set by step, beginning with the simplest first, building as we go. If you’ve been photographing for some time you will be familiar with many of these tools. But please keep your mind open to reinforce or learn new aspects of each. The biggest mistake one can make is to see a familiar tool and then assume that there’s nothing more to learn. I have found the reverse is true: the more I study a subject the more I appreciate and can learn from its basics; after all, “basic” means the foundation, which, like a house, must be strong to build upon.
1. Framing: Put an Edge around It
There are many ways to frame your photo. The simplest is to look for trees, or a branch, walls, window frames, etc. that can form an edge around your image, as you can see in the example above; you’ll see many others in the book as you read through it.
Putting an edge or frame around your composition serves many purposes: First, it highlights what you want the viewer to focus on. A frame adds order to the composition and leads your eye to the subject. It also adds depth by giving the image at least one more layer, which also adds contrast. This kind of frame adds a finished look, too. It’s like you’re saying, “Here is my photo—it’s wrapped up and ready for you to look at!”
There is another definition of “framing” that means to deliberately place your subject within the rectangle of your camera. When you do this you are looking closely for what you want in the image and also what you don’t want: for example, look at what is behind your subject—you don’t want a plant or tree growing out of his or her head. Or there may be a splotch of light next to them that pulls the viewer’s eye off course. In these cases, move your subject or move yourself to properly frame your subject with no such distractions.
An additional tip: less is usually more. Don’t clutter your image with anything not needed to tell your story. We call this “scanning the frame.” And be sure to pay attention to the edges of the frame as well.
Landscape format means that you compose with the long edge of your camera parallel to the ground, often used to capture natural scenes, hence it has been called “landscape.”
But, even though you compose this way, it doesn’t mean you have to use it just for “landscapes.” Many times portraits are composed in landscape format especially when they are showing the subject’s environment, which is called an “environmental portrait.”
Here you have the long edge of your camera turned up (perpendicular to the ground). It is often associated with a portrait of a person but, again, many landscapes are taken in portrait mode. It’s all up to you which format you use to tell your story, and you can always shoot it both ways and decide later which works best.
Sometimes to get your photo to “pop” it is as simple as just turning your camera on edge, as you can see I did here with my seventh grade classroom. I first shot it as a straight up portrait and decided it would be more interesting to shoot it on an angle, so I just turned the camera at about a 20-degree angle to get a totally different flavor of the classroom scene. But when you compose on an angle, do so purposefully to communicate what you intended, not just to have it appear as a crookedly captured image. As with most of these tools, that may take some practice.
5. Points of Thirds: Place Interesting Elements along These Lines
Back in 1797, John Thomas Smith, an English engraver, remarked that you could break an image into lines of thirds as an aid to composition. He suggested that, by placing important elements of composition on one of the lines or at the intersection of one of these lines, you could achieve a harmonious picture.
To do this, it helps to turn on the “Grid view” in your camera. You can find out how to set this up in the manual for your camera under “Grid view” and, on a smartphone, go to your camera settings and tap “Grid” to enable it.
David Smith, an award-winning outdoor photographer, gave this advice about composition:
“Use your grid view in your camera to place a subject on a point of thirds, which has a really strong dynamic pull to our eyes. You might have the subject looking into the frame or looking across the frame. If the subject is looking to the left, leave more space on the left for them to look into; same, of course, on the right. If the subject is looking up, put them low in the frame looking up at something.”
