Minimalist Composition Techniques

welcome to the art of photography everyone I'm your host Ted Forbes and today we are going to talk about using minimalist techniques and your photographs now I think most photographers and designers illustrators artists would agree that when you're creating a visual composition the hardest part isn't so much what to put into it sometimes the hardest part is what you leave out of it and that's why I want to look at some minimalist techniques and so what we're looking at here today is boiling your composition down into just the most basic shapes and forms to create a stronger visual impact in telling a story and so let's go over the computer right now and we're going to look at we're going to look at some photos and take from there okay so moving over we're going to look at some photographs today and for our little lesson on minimalism here I want to talk about what a photographer named Michael Cana and Michael Caine is a British photographer he does excellent work he kind of specializes in these real minimalist landscapes he's pretty old-school in terms of you know his his technique he shoots film shoots on a Hasselblad camera and does some darkroom manipulation which kind of plays into this and we'll talk about in a minute but you'll see that in this first image here this is just absolutely beautiful that he's really boiled this composition down into three basic elements you have the sky you have water any of these sticks they're standing out of the water and they reflect and so which is you know part of how you know this is water and he uses a traditional darkroom technique of burning and dodging and basically it we'll go over this in a separate podcast some time but it means when you're making the print is allowing more light to hit areas or less light so you can control and get this heavy contrast so you can see the sky's really burned in up at the top here it creates a little more interest in same at the bottom and they create some symmetry as well but it's you know it's easy to talk about minimalist composition because this is so boiled down to just a few elements you don't see anything else in here there's no boats there's no skyline there's no shore that's it's really just is bare-bones as you can get and you'll notice that you know the horizon line divides this photo directly in half here and which is a technique common to a lot of minimalist photographers but he also has the the sticks you know kind of sitting you know if you remember the rule of thirds episode and you might want to go back watch that if you haven't seen it but this is not directly in the middle of the photograph it's just off access a little bit to create some interest to your eye move on look at some others this is another kind of similar it's just a chair sitting on a beach but you can see really we've got a golden section down here where your thirds divided and same with the horizon this is you know one-third of the way down then two-thirds of the way down and two-thirds the way over you have this point of interest where you have the chair and again you can see heavy burning and dodging a lot of heavy dodging up here on the horizon line and the sky is almost black up here skies don't normally do that that's a technique that's usually done in the darkroom and it's absolutely beautiful in Ken's work this is another interesting photo this castle on this hill and the reason I'm using this obviously again very minimal rule of thirds everything is kind of you know by the book here but what's really interesting to me is is how you know this photo kind of relates to some trends you see in photography today and mainly I want to talk about HDR photography and for those of you don't know HDR is a high dynamic range and digital cameras compared to film cameras have a have a lower dynamic range than film does and so HDR is a way of taking multiple exposures and then being able to get more detail in the shadows down here and stuff like this but the reason I mention that is because especially in Canada's work it wouldn't be the same photo and you wouldn't have that minimalist quality it's ok to let things go dark and and go completely to blacks in here there's probably grass on this hill and you can't tell but it doesn't matter because what we're doing with this kind of minimalist technique is really boiling this composition down to just the most basic elements you you can you can come up with to avoid any distraction it's very minimal it's very simple it has a really strong dramatic effect kanna's use of light is very interesting too most of his images are pretty high contrast you have dark darks and bright whites and you know there's not a whole lot in between with some exceptions we'll look at in a minute but anyway I think that's that's pretty interesting when you and you kind of consider this is another one gosh I mean talk about high contrast this is the smokestacks here this is just about black and white as you can get he tones his photographs too so they're not pure black and white you're going to see you know the kind of sepia going on in there this was probably taken at night Kenna does a lot of night photography and it was probably done in he probably some kind of fog like condition and then smoke was probably coming out these stacks but anyway you kind of get this gritty grain coming off the film in there and it really accents the shape and you can tell those are smokestacks without that probably a little harder to discern this is the Golden Gate Bridge can I did a lot of work working in San Francisco I believe in the 80s and it's interesting to me because I keep seeing a lot of famous photographers shoot the Golden Gate Bridge and I love this angle because it's not the angle people normally pick and it's it's it's head-on you don't see that any of the depth in the bridge but you know we know what it is and you see the mountains back in the back and also again note that it is off-center he has a wonderful use of symmetry in here but it's it he pretty much conforms to the rule thirds most of the time it does create interest to the photo I think it's real easy for for you know beginner photographers to to try to get their symmetry lined up perfectly down the middle of the photograph run off and really that's fine but but the real interest is when you kind of pull that off axis a little bit again rule thirds episode if you haven't seen it another one that's real interesting and you get a sense too we talked about this in that rule of thirds episode with the use of diagonal lines that kind of complete triangles and so you have you know this axis coming up from the bottom left-hand side and also the top left-hand side and it's just some sticks in kind of a mud swamp kind of area maybe a field after a rain but again just simple minimal techniques you know with wonderful detail without having to do HDR or anything like that moving along this is also interesting too and some mechanics work he explores again it's very minimal you know these these heavy industrial photos but what's interesting is is the use of light in here and we've kind of talked about the zone system that Ansel Adams employed a little bit but basically you have shades of grey that you're playing with in the darkest being this piece of machinery up in the front the lightest being you know the backdrop of the smog or the clouds of fog or whatever that is and then you have various shades the depth is created here not by depth of field everything's in focus it's a very tight aperture but the depth is created simply by the various shades of these mechanical objects that kind of come in now and the smokestack is almost blending in with the background very very cool very interesting again this bridge you don't see a lot of detail I think this is you know this would be you know the the trends of the day would be to do something like this in HDR where you really get everything and can't even go for that and I think there's a real beauty and simplicity and minimalist quality that you get from that you obviously know that this is a bridge and if you this was an HDR reveal so many details you would really lose a lot of that minimalist quality but again triangular shapes diagonal lines rule thirds things like that and then finally last image and that simply loved Canada's night work this was done at night and we'll probably we'll do an episode of a tutorial on the podcast about how to shoot at night but what's really cool and I love this technique but if you can it's hard to line up because your weather is important but if you get a partly cloudy night where the wind is blowing and the clouds are moving you can basically do a really tight aperture and this is a really long exposure okay so the the the streaks in the sky were created by these clouds actually moving so this may have been a 10 20 minute exposure maybe even longer you know and and that creates the interest and of course you have the light down here but these are really wonderful shots and that night photography technique is simply beautiful it would be very minimal without any activity in the sky but not only do you have these beautiful clouds but you have this wonderful dramatic sense of motion it just adds to the photo but does not detract from again that minimalist quality anyway but this is this is Kenna's work I'm going to put a link to his website in the show notes he's got several books out I recommend that you know if you're serious about this at all you really study his work and you know like I said the books are fabulous you can find them on Amazon all over the place I'll put some links in the show notes on the website so that's on the public broadcast comm so anyway that's been you know a quick look at minimalist photography and thanks for watching

Channel: The Art of Photography

Views: 181,141

Keywords: art, photography, minimalist, composition, techniques

Id: TURFdRtSb7k

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 30 2010