Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
The rule of thirds in photography.
I know… I’m going back to basics but since I just published an article on the importance of Leading Lines in Photography, I thought it to be a good idea to go back to the beginning and explain crucial bits of photography which I hadn’t covered until now.
A note on rules: I have always held the belief that rules, however useful at times, are meant to be broken.
Don’t go slap your boss, it wasn’t meant that way.
I’ll put it in bold for you:
Watching movies and TV series is not only a great pastime activity on cold winter days but also a great way to find inspiration for your photography. Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit has become insanely popular, and it’s one of the shows photographers definitely should check out. In this video, Martin Kaninsky analyzes the series from a photographer’s point of view, giving you seven composition rules you can learn from it.
The number 3 crops up quite often in the world of photography. Here are just a few examples of things that happen in three’s.
The composition is one of the key elements to create a captivating image that will make an impression on a viewer. In this video, Nigel Danson shares seven tips to help you improve composition in your landscape photos. You can follow them at your very next shoot, and they’ll help you to level up both planning your shots and taking them.
When we talk about the rules of composition, the Rule of Thirds or the Golden Ratio are probably the first that come to mind to most of us. But there is something about centeredness and symmetry, too. Could “The Middle Line” be the secret rule of composition in visual arts? In this video from Light Club, you’ll see plenty of powerful photos and movie frames revolving around a fictional or a physical middle line. And when you see how many famous works have it, you’ll see that there’s something about it, indeed.
It’s that time of year when landscape photography is starting to become popular again. The snow’s all but disappeared for most of us. Even the continual rain seems to have died down a bit. The sun’s coming out, and the gorgeous rich green environment and vivid colours are coming back to nature.
But shooting landscapes isn’t always as easy or intuitive as one might hope. Many landscapes look so impressive in person that it’s difficult to really capture what caught your eye in a photograph. This video from photographer Toma Bonciu explains how to recognise those compositional elements to help get the shot you really want.
Oftentimes, good composition makes a difference between a good and a great landscape photo. But, as photographer Nigel Danson points out, the composition is often the area of photography people struggle with. So in his latest video, he talks about composition in landscape photography and shares some fantastic tips you can start using right away. It’s not just about the rules most of us know (such as the Rule of Thirds or the golden ratio). It’s about planning your shot and making your photos more interesting to your viewers.
Good composition is one of the key elements of what we’d call a good photo. Sometimes, it’s what turns a decent photo into a great photo. In this video, Peter McKinnon shares three composition tips that will help you improve your photos instantly. Other than newbies, I believe all those who feel they need to work on composition will find it useful
We can learn a lot about photography by observing and analyzing the works of the masters. Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of my favorite photographers of all times, the master of the decisive moment. Although he thought of photography as “immediate reaction,” he managed to combine prompt reaction with great composition.
In his two-part video series, photographer Tavis Leaf Glover was focused particularly on composition in Cartier-Bresson’s photos. He decomposes some of his images to show how masterfully used the principles of dynamic symmetry and geometry. If you want to learn from the master, these two videos are certainly something to watch.
Focal point is a term that photographers and photography blogs throw around continually. “Create a focal point,” it’s said, “it should be the first and last place the eye goes in your image.” That’s true, of course, but like most important things it’s easier said than done. A strong focal point is better thought of as the punctuation at the end of a carefully composed sentence. You need to know not only what makes the best single focal point, but also how to compose the sentence that precedes it.
First, consider what makes the best focal point; the best punctuation. There are a few things that your eye will shoot to first because of the way your brain processes visual information: points of high contrast, high sharpness, faces, human and animal forms, forward color tones (usually warm tones, like yellow) and recognizable objects that are large in frame (which reads as close). For effective punctuation of your visual sentence, you need an object or entity that creates interest and is comprised of at least one characteristic from this list.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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