Started to-day's posts at the crack of dawn - too late now to load images. The original camera image and an intermediate picture are helpful to show the process of composing, please come back for them if you have to. Until a scanner is installed recent digital pictures are all I have to work with, but will get out more now that spring is on its way.
Composition is a wide subject, and only partly a matter of geometry. Personal habits of framing the picture develop slowly but one of the most basic habits to acquire is to avoid centralizing the main subject every time. This requires a little effort with auto-focus because the area that focuses is always central on simple cameras. If you focus on the subject (or main subject), keep the release half pressed, and then frame your picture, you will have taken a step towards creating a picture - rather than being an automatic extension of an automatic camera!
A second very important habit to acquire is being prepared to move around a bit (if possible) to avoid distracting details near your main subject. Posts or trees 'growing' out of a person's head is the great cliche for this. A good editing program is a modern miracle for the photographer, and 'clone stamp' or 'healing brush' are fabulous tools.
Don't forget to send me any picture you like, maybe to play with at this end. Go well.
Showing posts with label phot-editing. improving photographs.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phot-editing. improving photographs.. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
How to compose and edit photographs. Part 1
After a lifetime's fascination with the photographic image Dr A wants to share some stuff with you. He knows 3 things for sure:
1. Picture composition has rules (like musical composition).
2. There are lots of them, but they are all logical, fun to learn, and make a difference to the appeal of ordinary photographs.
3. Only experience teaches you to compose pictures in the camera automatically, but a few seconds thinking is worth a thousand pictures - or something like that. AND most can be improved with simple editing.
This is going to be a regular column, and Dr A wants to see your pictures here for possible fixing. (providing they are not better than his. CB)
Just as good music is not random noise, good pictures are not random images. They share certain things - rhythm, form, balance, harmony, and line (melody).
Music is a pain when the rhythm is wrong. Music can be just rhythm - Indian music can take this to the ultimate. Pictures can have rhythm too.
Musical form is always there, it is hidden away most of the time, but your brain knows if it is badly wrong. Balance is part of form; it works quietly to make a musical piece feel better. I use 'form' in pictures to mean the overall design, made up of details.
Harmony can be totally overridden in modern music - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, etc. introduced discord bit by bit until now some discord is the new harmony. . By 'harmony' in pictures I mean how the main shapes seem to 'live together'.
Melodic line is not fashionable at the moment in music, but lines are important in pictures. Note, lines include edges.
The Brain. I use this word to mean the grey matter that receives the input of sight and sound. This brain likes to tell you what to think as well. Call it ‘instinct’ if you like, but it makes you feel uneasy, or satisfied with an image without your knowing the reason. An artist can manipulate this process – a great artist can do this greatly.
We are just going to post modest pictures and try to explain the thinking (and the instincts) behind them in terms of COMPOSITION only. Dr A is a beginner at photo-editing, but the simple tools can really do wonders for any photograph that you might want to improve.
1. Picture composition has rules (like musical composition).
2. There are lots of them, but they are all logical, fun to learn, and make a difference to the appeal of ordinary photographs.
3. Only experience teaches you to compose pictures in the camera automatically, but a few seconds thinking is worth a thousand pictures - or something like that. AND most can be improved with simple editing.
This is going to be a regular column, and Dr A wants to see your pictures here for possible fixing. (providing they are not better than his. CB)
Just as good music is not random noise, good pictures are not random images. They share certain things - rhythm, form, balance, harmony, and line (melody).
Music is a pain when the rhythm is wrong. Music can be just rhythm - Indian music can take this to the ultimate. Pictures can have rhythm too.
Musical form is always there, it is hidden away most of the time, but your brain knows if it is badly wrong. Balance is part of form; it works quietly to make a musical piece feel better. I use 'form' in pictures to mean the overall design, made up of details.
Harmony can be totally overridden in modern music - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, etc. introduced discord bit by bit until now some discord is the new harmony. . By 'harmony' in pictures I mean how the main shapes seem to 'live together'.
Melodic line is not fashionable at the moment in music, but lines are important in pictures. Note, lines include edges.
The Brain. I use this word to mean the grey matter that receives the input of sight and sound. This brain likes to tell you what to think as well. Call it ‘instinct’ if you like, but it makes you feel uneasy, or satisfied with an image without your knowing the reason. An artist can manipulate this process – a great artist can do this greatly.
We are just going to post modest pictures and try to explain the thinking (and the instincts) behind them in terms of COMPOSITION only. Dr A is a beginner at photo-editing, but the simple tools can really do wonders for any photograph that you might want to improve.
Molly on the wall
Sorry, I could not get the picture and
text (below) to post together. This post is the first of a series which deals with composition in photography, and simple editing in Photoshop. The picture below is the cropped but un-edited image. It's all upside down. It will be sorted, or my name's not Dr Awsom.
text (below) to post together. This post is the first of a series which deals with composition in photography, and simple editing in Photoshop. The picture below is the cropped but un-edited image. It's all upside down. It will be sorted, or my name's not Dr Awsom.
notes - composition and editing
The picture straight from camera was not a bad composition; editing is mostly cleaning up distracting details - entirely with Photoshop 'clone stamp. The rock Molly is sitting on was extended for a better base to the picture.
Most lines tend to lead the eye to Molly's own which was painted a bit - a little colour and a pupil. Her profile was lightened to read better against her body.
The movement in this picture is the strong diagonal - top left > bottom right, and the 'swing' of Molly's head. There is a weak diagonal formed by the branches and the rocks bottom left. This creates a balance.
Molly's outline is fairly clear, but a bit 'lumpy' , not very 'cat-shaped'. This, for me is the main fault.
There is a 'co-incidence' that normally I would have edited out, but left in. Its a small thing but looks almost deliberate. When you find it your eyes will keep returning to it.
Let me know what it is. And thank you for looking.
Most lines tend to lead the eye to Molly's own which was painted a bit - a little colour and a pupil. Her profile was lightened to read better against her body.
The movement in this picture is the strong diagonal - top left > bottom right, and the 'swing' of Molly's head. There is a weak diagonal formed by the branches and the rocks bottom left. This creates a balance.
Molly's outline is fairly clear, but a bit 'lumpy' , not very 'cat-shaped'. This, for me is the main fault.
There is a 'co-incidence' that normally I would have edited out, but left in. Its a small thing but looks almost deliberate. When you find it your eyes will keep returning to it.
Let me know what it is. And thank you for looking.
Molly, for composition - raw image
Straight from the camera; except for the crop no clean-up, no filters. The most glaring compositional faults for me are the continuation of Molly's outline in the rock below, and the 'lumpy' boring shape of the subject, even though the outline is reasonably clear . Molly's profile is not strong either. No more than 4/10 for this shot, but the clean-up is a little better perhaps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)