Visual Design Of A Photograph

I always start my composition lectures with talking about learning to see because learning to see is something that we have to do over and over and over again I don't think that we ever stop I don't care if you're 95 and you're a photographer you still need to to keep learning to see and a great quote by I love quotes so I have a lot of quotes in my lecture letting go of yourself as an essential precondition of real seeing so how do we learn to see there's a couple ways we need to observe more acutely and as photographers I think we already naturally do this I think that if you remember maybe when you first started doing photography suddenly you're you say wow I'm walking down the street and I can't not see a photo everywhere I look I'm like framing the composition right so we're already probably more than the average citizen a little more attuned to observing more acutely develop an imagination and then express ourselves more effectively and developing an imagination is something I'll talk a little more about this afternoon part of it is giving your the giving yourself the permission to imagine something and then make it happen and then expressing ourselves I like to break these down even simpler for my students I think of it as seen see feel think so what what sort of falls under each of these categories seeing is learning to see so developing are I a little a little better as time goes on knowing our tools of course you have to know the difference between what a wide-angle lens looks like and what a telephoto lens looks like right and how they change space what what a certain aperture looks like versus another aperture shutter speeds right we have to understand our technical tools and what they're going to do because a camera sees differently than we do and then we arrange the elements in the frame to make a pleasing composition and then like I said it's our job to direct the viewers eye okay it's very important our job we'll talk about how to do that the feeling part of it is what's the mood what's the style what's the story what is your intention for the photograph what do you what do you want to do with it what do you want to say with it and say you might say to yourself well I don't know anything to say but that could simply be I want the image to be a reflection of how I saw the light that day I want the image to show the way the light was passing beautifully through those leaves or it could be that you want to say something about to the greater world so that could run a spectrum and then to think it's this is more the meaning of the photograph right is it a symbol or a metaphor for something what about the presentation as photographers I think we can often drop the ball relative to other artists in the presentation side of photography meaning how is it shown once it gets off that glowing screen right what kind of paper what scale what framing what situation on the wall off the wall video moving still on and on has a big impact on how the viewer sees our work and then expressing our ideas and of course post-processing is a really big can be a really big aspect of how the image looks after we've made it so barriers to seeing we always have to go here first because I know you all have them right we all have barriers to seeing so see if any of these sound familiar to you if you've ever heard yourself say these before Wan just an amateur I'm not a professional I'm not serious I'm just you know well you probably still want to make compelling photographs and you want your photography to be better okay so note no excuse for on that one this one I just love oh I'm just not creative okay well I don't speak French either but if I want to I can learn it or you know I might no not know how to do something else but I can learn it and so if you want to be creative you can learn to be creative as well oh I need right I don't have the right lens or the right tripod or the right intervalometer or the nononononono no no no I'm right and I've done this a million times I've also in the days of film when I shot medium format put away my entire system for a year and shot the Holga for a year the Holga plastic camera and because I was getting so caught up in what lens and what that was ridiculous and so I said enough is enough and my life was very complicated at the time and I said clearly if I had commercial work I picked up the film camera but I did that to sort of free myself and those are some of my favorite images uh everyone shot this or this has been done before or this is never going to be as good as that person's so I'm just not going to bother shooting it right well you each have your own unique perspective I love this one taking students on workshops oh no I don't photograph people oh no no I don't photograph in the city no no no no no I don't photograph between the hours of 2:00 and 12:15 p.m. Dolf 16 I start you know I mean what's that I try not to photograph too early by blow away yeah well so sometimes we're thrown in situations where um we have an opportunity to photograph and so what can you do with it what can you make out of it right so we can have preconceptions about ourselves as photographers or subject matter or a photography ourselves some of the things we just talked about don't worry about making a good photograph or what others will think or how you should be feeling while you're photographing right how many times do you go out there I always have students on a workshop in the first day they're just like I should be feeling this way and I'm not okay right so so let's warm up let's go you got it you got to start shooting too to get those feelings going and sometimes we all know I've certainly gone out for shoots and come back and been like I don't know that was that wasn't too good that wasn't that wasn't what I expected and I'm fabulous images and then I've also gone and you know how to shoot and been like high-fiving my assistant thinking that I just you know may the most amazing images ever and maybe I didn't do as well as I thought I did right so sometimes we have to detach that what we expect to feel when were photographing and just make the photograph okay really how they're more yeah probably more than even I'm saying here and these are from this next list the from plate they're from Freeman Patterson so the me cramps so this idea we've all been there right we're all of a sudden we get self-conscious about the camera about using the camera or we suddenly think we're not good enough or we just start to get in that place of uh what am i doing I don't know everybody's looking at me right gotta let go of that for sure the massive stimuli around us right we're going to talk a little bit how photography is a reductive or a selective medium right we have to eliminate elements and simplify the frame but we live in a society and in a culture now where we are bombarded with stimuli I walked in a Times Square last night and I haven't been here in about seven years so it wasn't quite so video-oriented Wow Wow so so we're used to we're used to shutting things out right it's how we survive in life we have to shut up shut out all the mass stimuli but when it comes time to photography we have to start to tune in again okay labeling from familiarity right Twyla Tharp does a great talk on creativity where she puts a stool on the stage with a back on it and asks the audience tell me as many uses as you can think of for the stool and she says the less creative people stop after all the ways that she would use it as a stool right well I would sit on it or I would prop a door open with it and and then the other people that she dubs a little more creative stop thinking about it as a stool at all and start to think about what you could do with a structure on the stage that is not a stool right so we can label from familiarity so if you go into a situation to shoot you might say oh look this is just a heap of scrap metal and I'm not interested in this okay well then let's talk about the texture or let's talk about the lines or the shapes okay are there other things there besides this the heap of metal okay and a great quote by Monet in order to see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at sometimes the camera itself can be a barrier right for certainly when we're first learning where's that darn button or when we get our new camera and we're like playing twister with our buttons or when we get when we start adding more equipment to our collection maybe you start working with lighting or flash sometimes we can get so focused on the back of that darn screen the back of the camera that we're not paying attention to what's happening in the scene so the camera itself can block us off a little bit so we have to start to think about how a camera sees okay because we see differently than a camera so one of the first things you need to learn right we edit and the camera does not meaning and we've all experienced this that lens will see everything that's in front of that lens right so if there's a pole coming out of the guy's head right there's something coming in the side you didn't see if you got some elements that you weren't paying attention to that lens is going to see it right our brains correct distortion and the camera does not as we all know right for instance white balance okay it's an easy thing to fix now luckily with digital very easy but um you know if you don't have white lights if we're in a room with fluorescent lights and we took a picture on daylight everybody would look green okay our eyes correct for distortions and shifts in color and the camera does not so we need to know how to compensate for that or when you're shooting a tall building and you get keystoning right we don't see it that way with our eyes but the cameras seeing it being Keystone's so we have to understand how the camera sees so we can make it see the way we want it to see the camera doesn't have a memory or an emotional attachment right how many times do you have a big emotional attachment to the experience of photographing right you come from a shoot and it was just the most beautiful morning with fog and mist and you were alone and it was great it doesn't mean the images are great okay you need to make the images great or later when you edit you need to choose the ones that are the best but we can get emotionally attached to something but we need to be a little more subjective or objective when we're editing our images so photography is a unique medium relative to a lot of others right so we need to learn to view the world through the camera and one of the things that we do with photography is we take a three-dimensional world we're collapsing it into two-dimensional space whether that's the screen on the back of our camera or computer screen a piece of paper right but we're constantly trying to give the illusion of depth with photography okay so what are some of the tools that we use to create depth what's the tool being used here shallow depth of field right perspective as well certainly where the photographer put himself or herself relative to the subject by getting close to the door and having it slightly ajar but selective focus a very shallow depth of field okay also we're going to talk about light areas sharp areas where the eye likes to go in a photograph but this gives us a sense that we are actually peering through the door at this at this moment here we have a broad depth of field right everything is sharp but we have lots of elements happening here we have a nice curve happening so our eyes are going to follow curves we're going to talk about lines we follow the curve notice how the curve ends up in an area of brightness and high contrast our eyes like to go to bright areas our eyes like to go to areas of high contrast so notice how the road leads us to that area okay also notice how the perspective that the photographer had which seems down low with with a wide angle made it so that the entire Road is filling the bottom of the frame we have nowhere else to go but down that path okay there's there's not a field of flowers over here there's not another path over here this composition is making us go down this path and the fact that it's in full detail with lots of texture we like to explore texture ok so there's elements being used here to draw our eye through the photograph Ansel Adams lots of elements being used here but mostly light and shadow we're going to talk about how light areas come forward dark areas recede look at the depth in this image I mean this is a this is a flat screen we're looking at here it feels like you could walk into this grove of trees this is an old image from photographic history here we're using line and perspective right so we have oops sorry the line that's happening is this strong diagonal happening between the woman here and the rocks here the shapes mimicking each other so we tend to go back and forth between these similar shapes and that's moving us through the frame and then the other thing is the placement of the subject in the bottom right corner allowing us to look where she's looking gives us a sense of depth imagine if this were just a a vertical of just the woman with a little bit of water okay you would be looking at the woman you wouldn't be looking as much beyond the woman okay so this is perspective inline happening so some unique other unique characteristics of the medium as I said before it's a subtractive medium okay not that painters can't sand down the canvas and redo right but generally they're building onto a canvas and yes a sculptor can chisel down for sure but we're really having to eliminate so many elements to simplify our frame generally the simpler the better right so tell me what's the subject of this photograph let's say again the leaf and what else the baby what season is it where is he okay so you just knew the entire story from very little elements in the frame that it's a little boy in holding a leaf in autumn in a stroller outside okay do we need to see the outside do we need to see the rest of the stroller do we need to see the leaves with no trees on them No very simple do we don't even need to see the top of the boy's head we have his expression we have him holding a leaf and then we're going to do this back and forth the two bright areas we're going to go back and forth for the frame I think that in this situation it was wise for the photographer to put the baby's face slightly out of focus because we're going to go to faces faces are very interesting to us it's an area of high contrast it's a cute baby so we want to look there but if that would have been sharp this would have completely fallen away this would not have been as important so by making this sharp and this slightly out of focus we create hierarchy in the image we have to create hierarchy right this tells us look here first then go there then keep going back and forth okay here's a here's a an image very little information we don't need the head of the horse the tail the legs even the top of the cowboy all we have is this action happening between the rider and the horse and the expression on the Cowboys face and him holding on for dear life and then we have beautiful light we have motion in the background and we have complementary colors of the blue and the orange we'll talk about color a little bit but a pretty simple composition this is Big Sky Montana not much else in that scene right big sky and of course these little elements that Elizabeth saw I'm sure the tree and the cloud mimicking each other so I'm guessing Elizabeth is Elizabeth stone colleague and works at the school came across the scene saw these two elements and what did she do she they're the only elements in the frame really she anchored them on the bottom corners so they start to mimic each other she included a nice big sky and just a little bit of ground to give us the sense of place and also because we needed to leave some space around that tree but again a very simple simple composition even Ansel Adams could be a minimalist at times this is an Ansel Adams photograph known for his broad grand landscapes this is a pretty simple composition of just a tree enveloping these three people with a little bit of scenery in the background this is just shooting in Alaska and I was really drawn I love words I love text and I was really drawn to this word and I just wanted a little bit of the beat up building and a little bit of this this you know sort of patriotic or American type flag in the corner this is an old cabinet in a ghost town in Montana we have ghost towns in Montana and it's really just about the old cabinet the peeling paint we have the nice repetition of 3s happening here and just one of the cabinet's open to show that it's empty so that we get a sense that this is a place that's been left behind it's abandoned but this is about the texture and the old nough sub the cabinet and that's all that's in that frame this is one of the stories that I did for one of the magazines about Flathead Valley up in near Flathead Lake in Missoula in Montana and it's a big cherry area cherry picking area and so again it's being being exclusive a little bit right excluding a lot of elements you know I didn't need the rest of the ladder I didn't need the rest of the man just him picking and dropping in the bowl a little bit of scenery behind so you get a sense of the place and then with this I just loved the the little cloud floating behind and I decided to throw it out of focus so that hopefully I knew that it would be a large bright area in the center of the frame and that it would draw attention so I just threw it out of focus so that it wouldn't battle this too much another unique aspect of photography is the detail with which we can capture things right we have microscopic photography this is a cross-section of a clematis plant this is from the late 1800s we have telescopic photography right now we can see very far beyond our own planet in great detail the detail with which we can capture texture it tells a story so the detail with which the camera can can record scenes and often show us things that we would never stop to notice perhaps with our naked eye until a photographer stops and makes us pay attention the timing with which we can photograph cartier-bresson was the king of timing right the decisive moment capturing that moment as it happens or what we do today is we fire away 1,500 shots and hope we get it or shoot video and pull the still card a person's turning over in his grave so yeah that moment these moments that we can capture another car da person this is Eisenstaedt right uh you know and he tells the stories as a Pulitzer prize-winner tells the story of just capturing just just the corner of his eye seeing this interaction begin to happen between the policeman and the little boy and he immediately knew he had to stay and wait for it he was ready to go so as photographers we have to anticipate what's going to happen sometimes or wait for a moment to happen and this happened like that and then it was gone this is great one I mean how hilarious is this I love how they all have the same tie on that's great and I mean what a moment what a moment that the audience I'm sure even sitting in the audience they didn't see because they're paying attention to what Bill saying you know and and this photographer just captured this beautiful moment that you know we won't get political but if this doesn't say a lot I don't know what does about our current state of politics um speed right our fast shutter speeds and our fast strokes how we can freeze motion right this is a eggleston uh no yeah why am i blanking on his name Edgerton Harold Edgerton who developed the original very very high fast fast robes so this is a bullet going through balloons he did the famous photo that was the milk drop that beautiful milk drop mm-hmm so the way that we can capture speed with our fast shutter speeds and we can do that with a fast shutter speed or a slow shutter speed by showing speed or freezing action and now again with our 29 frames per second we can shoot video and grab a high quality still from a 29 frames per second video and chance sometimes like I said the way we shoot today sometimes we just fire away and and we're going to get those lucky shots and there's nothing wrong with that because you were there knowing how to use your equipment making the decision to shoot composing your shot so we can't always anticipate or direct the scene apparently this polar bear popped his head up over this this hill so I believe the most important question when we're making photographs is what is my subject okay I challenge my students on workshops all the time I like to come up to them to say maybe shootin oh well I just um the scene here and okay what's your subject well I mean I like you know and eventually I can get them down to I liked the little light was falling on the water right in front of that tree okay so then let's make the most important thing in the frame the water falling on the light in front of that tree and anything else that's in that frame should support that and anything else that's in that frame that doesn't support it needs to go away and this is why it's important to ask yourself what the subject is because I'm going to give you a lot of tools for designing a photograph how are you going to know which tools to pull out of your toolbox right I mean it's like when you're building something you got to know the plan before you go grow or what tool do you need to grab what you need to do with it so not that we're always planning sometimes it's spontaneous and chance right but generally we have to identify what the subject is so that we can arrange the frame and the elements in the frame so first we say what is your subject what are you drawn to in the photograph is it the light the texture the line the person's face the shapes and then you explore the subject a little bit this is where we start to get maybe different lenses should I use a wide angle should I use a telephoto should I put on my macro should I get in a low perspective a high perspective I should walk around my subject and see if there's another perspective that would work better and then when you get the perspective you want then you want to isolate the subject right it should be I'd like to think of composition with images as actors in a play you should be able to identify who is the main actor and who are the supporting actors and what is the set okay because again it's your job to draw the eye through the photograph so we should be able to say oh yeah the main subject is the leaf and the little boy okay because then we need to isolate the subject and organize any of the elements that we decide to include in the frame around that subject and we start to create hierarchy if there is another element that's supposed to be a supporting actor that's drawing more attention than the main subject then you got to do something about it you need to put it in a position that doesn't draw as much attention you need to use shallow depth-of-field darken it whatever it may be that you have to do so that it's not drawing attention away from your main subject okay so I just thought we should get this out of the way this whole thing about following rules I like to just talk about this early on rules are meant to be broken right we need to learn the rules first okay but whenever I hear the words out of photographer's mouth you should never I run in the other direction okay unless they say like you know you should never plunge your camera into the ocean and then for five minutes okay but I don't believe in you should never okay I've I've been on landscape workshops before where the instructor said if it's a white sky just don't bother shooting hmm okay but this is down at the Outer Banks we're down at the Outer Banks for a week we had boy sky the entire time what are we gonna do not shoot so in this situation I minimize the white sky I knew it wouldn't be interesting but I thought it was a nice backdrop to this texture and and footsteps in the sand so I just minimized it sometimes the white sky we can use as negative space negative space is really beautiful when used properly so all this area whoops sorry that doesn't have anything in it I love this shot because everybody thinks that this isn't like this big island in the middle of water this was a foggy day on pea island and this is basically a tough to grasp this big in a little stream but with the fog and the white sky I was able to completely distort the space and perspective I like the idea of me looking out into blankness this is also sorghum Coast you're going to get a lot of blank sky in the winter in the Oregon coast so I used that to make it a little bit eerie or feel like the unknown you could feel like unknown or it could feel like possibilities so we just have to understand that what to do with blank skies right they can work at times we just have to know how to work with them they can create a really nice mellow backdrop for our foreground elements they can also create a lot of atmosphere and mood okay so don't stand or the image is too static right use the rule of thirds throw it off to the side okay usually but sometimes we want something to feel still and stable and quiet so if you want something to feel dynamic throw it off to the side if you want something to feel static or still then centering it is going to add to that feeling it gives a sense of symmetry balance stability so you have to decide what you want the photograph to feel like and then you decide if you want to break that rule or not if you're going to have balance and symmetry it needs to be needs to be spot-on needs to be perfect right needs to be lined up and now that we have live view with our grids on the back hallelujah right Dorothea Lange right Dorothea Lange saw the beauty of this subject and the interest of this woman she didn't worry about throwing her off to the side or putting out negative space she just filled the frame with a portrait of this woman looking straight at the camera okay so we can break the rules as long as we use them creatively but if we're always thinking about following the rules then we would miss a shot like this right don't point your camera at the Sun you're going to get lens flare put on that lens hood it's true but what if you want to give the sense of a hot summer day being outside or that feeling of what it's like when you look into the Sun and it's it's falling on you you might want to give that feeling and therefore you might choose to have lens flare it feels different than when you don't have lens flare but it's up to you decide how you want the photograph to feel in this situation I placed Athena exactly I wanted the light coming right over her head and through her dress this is Tim Cooper sometimes lens flare looks like this right not always the color you know octagons but sometimes it just gives this hazy blown out look this is a very kind of young hip contemporary scene it it suits this now if Dorothea Lange's portrait of the woman had lens flare not so much right so you have to decide if it fits the mood and the style and the subject matter and it doesn't always have to come in the in the you know way of lens flare can come in the way of light coming through the subject towards the camera okay make sure that horizons straight I agree I my attitude is if you're gonna break a rule break it all the way right you don't want to horizon that's just slightly skewed because then it looks like a mistake okay but if you're going to skew it then skew it and that what this does is it creates movement I mean this makes this feel alive and whimsical and fun so we can use a horizon that's not level we just have to be conscious of you that we're using it and why we're using it and how we're using it there's so many elements that are adding to the fun feel of this the bright colors the green grass the movement the expression the skewed horizon the light the Sun sometimes we might skew the horizon just to make it feel like there's movement right I mean you almost feel like you're riding on the back of this bicycle with this girl this was a situation where I wanted it to feel like my model was swinging but I didn't feel like sitting there being like okay go okay gonna go too so I just skewed it so it looked like she was you know up in the air so it can it can add a certain element of fun or whimsy if used properly people should always be sharp true if you're doing a portrait it's important for the eyes to be sharp however tell minor white that this is minor white this is called an old woman descending a staircase so if you you know if we want to be creative or show movement this is Irving Penn these are kids on the streets of Morocco so clearly he set up his tripod right because the whole background sharp he set up this scene and I don't know if he asked the kids to run in front of the camera or they did but he created this sense of movement and a little bit of mystery as well with them not being sharp says Ralphie Eugene meet yard these are all historical photographers he was from the 50s 60s notice how the movement of this boy's arm starts to mimic what appears to be wings up top that's pretty interesting so we can break the rules if we we would do that in a creative way okay so the basic elements of photography basically are form and content so form or all the visual aspects and content would be the meaning so form is the structure or the visible aspects and all the elements independent of meaning so our composition elements of form and photography every medium has its own elements of form our primary ones are shape line texture and color this is what we are using in our frame to create our image they might not all be there but at least one of them is guaranteed to be there and then we use composition and perspective to arrange these elements think of them as the building blocks and then we use this to arrange them to make a pleasing composition hopefully so the tools that we use as photographers of course our primary tool is light light is what defines all of these right I think sometimes as photographers we can forget that we're photographing light I used to go shoot with my friend all the time and she said to me once and we'd been shooting for 15 years at this point and she said to be God you know you've reminded me when we go to a scene she said you just keep getting these images and I'm not getting and she's like what's the first thing you do when we go to the scene and I said I look for the light I look for the most beautiful light first and then I start to see if I can make something out of it so light defines all of these and then we as the photographer create the composition in the perspective so all shapes basically stem from these primary shapes that we learned in kindergarten right so start to train your eye to look at images and think about it being an arrangement of shapes okay so here we have the very obvious shapes we have the round bubble this is Clarence white from the late 1800s now we will we will continue shapes beyond the frame so we're seeing a circle here as well because we know it's a boy's head so we're seeing two circles we see this big rectangle of the window and then all the little circles on the window as well okay really strong shapes happening here of course the circles of the sand dollars but look at these three big triangles one two three look at painting to study composition look at classical painting because think about it I love looking at painting and studio photography because I know in painting and studio photographers pecet photography generally with studio photography there are no mistakes everything is planned the colors that were chosen the composition the light everything is intentional so by studying those you start to see how these artists are arranging compositions and when you look at classical paintings I mean you just see these elements of triangles happening everywhere and we'll talk about our eyes going to light areas look at this triangle okay classic triangles everywhere why do you think when you see lots of portraits there's always the latter when you see group portraits and there's this you know someone's always on a ladder or look at the Annie Leibovitz shots of the spreads of Vanity Fair you'll see lots of triangles of three in poses it's a dynamic composition it moves the eye through the frame if you want it to be dynamic if you want it to be static then you wouldn't do that so again we have these shapes we have the circle we have triangle we have a strong vertical line suit Abarth a German contemporary photographer so just arrangements of shapes I love this one this is Bruce Davidson I love this one because this is a project that he did of the projects in Chicago in the 60s I believe look at all these repeating squares and hard angles okay you have square rectangle you have these rectangles and squares you have the window you have the building you have more windows and what does that do when you have all these hard angles and then you have this one soft round subject in the middle of all these hard angles what does that do it makes her feel vulnerable it makes her feel like she's in this very harsh hard-edged environment and she is and he places her low and small in the frame and makes her feel small okay very intentional we know this is an intentional composition one because it's Bruce Davidson two because look at the look at these angles they're perfect I mean the exact amount meaning you know the lines are parallel to the frame there's no skewing happening this is a very intentional composition this is not a quick grab so light also creates texture texture can add to the feel of an image and it depends on the direction and quality of light generally side lighting is going to show the most texture right so side lighting right that's one of the reasons we say to photograph in those parts of the morning and night not only because it's beautiful warm light right in Twilight but it also side lighting creates a lot of texture so we get lots of light and shadow I mean does this look like you know I don't I don't know people ski in New York but does this look like soft powder you want to jump into now it's hard it's cold the blue color actually really helps so by Doug not balancing this to take away the blue cast adds to that cold hard feeling of it so high contrast increasing the contrast will increase the prevalence of the texture right sometimes images are all about the texture for instance this I believe this is Aaron Siskind so it's just about the texture of this wood you almost can feel it with your fingers when you look at it right this is Martin Schoeller who does these famous portraits he doesn't use a softbox in her beauty light with pleasing light on his on his subjects right he wants them to be seen with all of their flaws and the reality of who they are and he increases the contrast a lot as well okay so getting in a position and using the light to show texture this is Montana in the winter wake up every morning with ice on my window so I decided to start shooting ice on my window this is spring in Montana it snows while the sun's out it snows and then it stops and yeah and then we can also think outside of the box a little bit and add texture in different ways so this is an image that I did it's intentionally soft and it felt too perfect to me it felt too clean so I made a print of it and then I scratched the surface of the print with a sponge and then scanned that so that I could get all this scratching on the top of it because I wanted it to feel a little worn I didn't want it to feel so perfect so we can add texture later and with scanning and Photoshop now or photographing you can photograph layers of texture or scan layers of texture and drop them in over your images so light also defines lines like I said I like quotes so I like that one so horizontal lines tend to sorry tend to give a sense of feeling stable and restful and again you know this is most of the time is this is how horizontal lines will feel look at all these repetitive horizontal lines of defensing and then of the ocean beyond I really like that page let us see the horizon between the bars I think that was a smart move okay this very strong horizontal we've lots of verticals here but this strong horizontal on the top of the frame right women's suffragette movement they feel very unified so putting a horizon smack-dab in the middle of the frame can feel very stable or static this image doesn't feel as stable or static because it's a very tumultuous ocean we can tell it's storming so we have these strong horizontal lines we have the band of blue the band of white and then the band of green so just start to pay attention to lines and shapes I purposely included these yellow parking whatever they're called because I wanted them to sort of anchor the bottom of the frame I wanted to feel like she was moving out of the frame I wanted to give it a little bit of sense of mystery like what's this girl doing with the suitcase you know vertical lines can give a sense of formality or power or strength again pay attention to painting and how people are posed so strong vertical lines can feel very powerful they can feel formal as well I really liked this silhouette of these tall trees and I wanted to feel small amongst the tall trees so Mathew Brady could have posed Lincoln you know in a chair like this you know he could have created lines he could have had him sitting with his legs splayed out in his arm but he wanted him to feel formal and strong and powerful it's a very formal pose Annie Leibovitz could have taken John and Yoko and putting them at a diagonal right wouldn't most photographers have maybe thought to do that Oh diagonal I want movement I want the sense of movement I'm in it I'm gonna you know skew the frame but by putting them in a strong vertical smack-dab in the middle of the frame they feel very unified very strong and we have so much movement happening anyway we look at all the movement with the lines of John triangle we have the movement of his arm we have these two circles okay so think about where you want to place the lines and how you want to place the lines they determine how the image feels and then of course we know probably that the diagnol lines create a feeling of movement right and again if you look at painting I mean the the lines happening here they're everywhere you've this strong line the line of the tree the line of the umbrella even the woman holding her arm up the way they're posed they're all over the place lines move us through the frame especially diagnol lines we're just going to start going through the frame this is a pair of photographers from Scotland in the very first few decades of photography they recall Hill & Adamson were their last names and they were the first photographers this is in days of daguerreotype s-- to start using line to create a dynamic feeling and photographs right and all the portraiture then you saw this right straight forward or sitting in a chair most of that was because the exposures were so long right so they had I mean they would literally put people in metal Cramps clamps so that they would stay still don't go to the daguerreotypist must've been like going to the dentist in those days but when the exposures started getting a little faster Hill & Adamson started saying let's create some some lines and if you look at their work all of their work they start placing people in triangles and this is a this is a self-portrait that they did and look at this strong angle that they have Imogen Cunningham right she was part of the f64 group with Ansel Adams her work is very feminine if you look at imagens work it's very feminine I always take someone off the audience when I say I think women photograph differently than men and I'm going to say it anyway because I think it's true it's we're just different we photograph differently and I think her her images are really feminine she uses a lot of a lot of curves and diagonals and movements so think about you could have taken another perspective here where you stood behind these chairs right and you could have had horizontal bar of sand horizontal blue chairs horizontal beach or horizon and then all these vertical right that that would be another perspective that would work it would just feel different it would be more stable or static this one I mean look we asked your eye where it's going right right down that line show this one before lots of diagonal lines happening I wanted to create a sense of movement right Dorothea Lange right one of the FSA photographers who was accused of posing her subjects um I say who cares I mean it's not like she was giving them props and saying okay look sad now look like you're desolate now um cuz they work right uh but she's people have said that she might have moved her models a little bit or asked them to get in a different position because my I guess my attitude is because she wanted people to be drawn to the photographs she wanted people to want to look at them she wanted them to be visually pleasing so that they would look and feel something right and so she in this situation look at this strong diagonal happening even with the the curve the turn of the bottle okay so start to ask yourself where does your eye go in the photograph where is it going and then we have curved lines which generally ask the viewer to wander through the frame they can often slow us down we sort of weave this is will see some classic examples here so this is andreas gursky used to hold the record for the most money ever paid for a photograph 3.8 million and now it's Cindy Sherman right now it's him again okay he just beat out Cindy Sherman again I love it you know it's funny because I often have my students I'll show them andreas gursky z-- first image the diptych of the hundred cent the dime store or penny store whatever it is and my students I always say how's it make you feel that someone paid you know most four million dollars for this photograph and they always get mad but I could take that image I can't believe that and my response is well you didn't first of all and second of all we should be psyched that people are paying four million dollars for photographs right because there was a time where photography was the ugly stepsister that got no respect and people wouldn't even dream of paying $50 for a photograph so I'm excited I'm like bump it I mean I think it's insane that people do that but bring on right keep paying money for photographs that makes me happy so that classic sort of s-curve wandering look where your eye goes comes in right in that diagonal and wanders all the way up to the top to an area of high contrast okay right classic images by Steve McCurry look at this look at this beautiful curved line coming around her face okay it draws is not that we're not drawn to these eyes right I mean but the way that this is coming around her face really frames it okay just take a look at lines and angles okay look at this big circular curve happening okay so just paying attention to curves and how they frame the subject and classic example Edward Weston's pepper series right all about curves and sort of using the peppers to mimic the human body so we also have one of my favorite kinds of line which is implied line this can be either in the shape of a silhouette or it can be an implied line between two either two subjects or an implied line created with the subject corner great implied line here right everyone we're just looking at we're looking out beyond the frame so here we have not only this long implied line but then we have this great line of the bat now is this something this is photographer as you were saying earlier in the back is this something this photographer you know thought about these lines and angles at the time they were shooting this probably not I mean they probably grabbed this shot but they might have cropped it later to feel this way or sometimes when we get good at composition we start to do these things intuitively right we don't have to think about it great implied line here right love this I'm going to put my money on the cat but I love these you have all these diagonals happening right all these diagonals you have this you know intersection here and then this soup and then this diagonal happening here and then this really strong implied line between the two subjects yeah yeah no no a little little tension there implied line so again this is this is Paul strand I believe these beautiful lines being created with light and shadow but then we have implied line right here men looking at the women women not paying attention women and then we're good we're going to look where the women are looking too so we're looking out here and we're looking here they're paying attention they're just pretending they're not paying it you're looking at a corner dress okay so implied line think about where your view where your subject is looking in the frame okay strong implied line here looking down and then we're going to look up at the shaft of light in the window so we have this really strong angle happening here okay so let's talk a little bit about color light determines color we all probably know the Kelvin temperature scale seems like we barely have to know it these days cuz we have our good old white balance easy to fix but what I want to talk about with color is we're gonna talk about some common common characteristics of color but also ways we can use color to change the mood of a photograph right we don't always want to fix the color shifts so this was I was photographing in my friend's backyard it was like 2:00 in the morning she had you know we had these alley alley streetlights that were causing this really strong orange glow and I decided to keep it I liked it I liked that it sort of added this eerie feeling to it and then I was taking a just a regular you know Garage clamp light and and lighting up the tree and the hammock thank you so I'm like blasting light on those to light them up and letting all that orange glow come in from the streetlight okay the blue cast of this light adds to this somber and sort of sullen feel this is Carmen vivy a amazing fashion photographer imagine how different we feel that light was red or yellow okay so we can use color creatively to add to the feel of a photograph did you just get a sense of warmth from this from that yellow color this one I love so this is this isn't mine this is I think there's Elizabeth stones but I love this one not because I necessarily love the image but what I love about it is this could have been shot in August like don't we just immediately assume it's winter because it's blue and the kids got winter clothes on and you have the rake we can't there's no snow there's it could it could really be August that grass could be green the Sun could be shining it could be 90 degrees but by putting him in this costume and then the rake also gives that feeling and then and then toning it blue suddenly we think it's winter so color is really powerful this is an image from down at the Oregon coast and I just thought I'd like to see what it looked like in two different colors I think they feel very different this is an image I do a lot of creative writing and then I make images to try to go along with my writing so this is something I wrote about my dad and so I used about taking early-morning walks with hot coffee but the light this was in the middle of the day the light was not warm and glowing and so I really warmed it up to make it feel like the Sun was just warm and shining on him so these are some shots from Alaska where I played with allowing the color temperature to be what it was right so this is Seward Alaska this is right a coastal town in Alaska it's blue it's blue and gray and I wanted to keep it that and the reason I put them next to each other right is because color is so subjective sometimes if I just showed you this slide you would maybe be like well that's not very blue but when you see that this is color balanced this I allowed to go blue and this was in an old fishing shop where there were fluorescent lights so I let it go green because I wanted it to have that indoor fluorescent to it okay so we can use color creatively so let's talk a little bit about some characteristics of color so analogous colors or colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel and remember this is the photographer's color wheel which is different from the painters color wheel so if you ever want to google color wheel make sure you say for photographers they're a little bit different so analogous colors lie next to each other on the color wheel and what they do is they they're harmonious they flow together easily okay so for instance here we have yellow and green and a little bit of orange now yes the subject matter and the treatment of the image make it feel harmonious but the colors are helping it okay cyan and blue they flow very easily into each other yellow orange and red it's going to create less depth okay when you have complementary colors it makes the color separate so this image feels very flat right it's also the choice of lens but the color choices are helping as well this look yeah this is um when you take and this isn't mine this is my friend Jenny Fraser and but many photographers do it right when you take two images of the same scene you take one that's sharp and you throw the other one slightly out of focus and then you merge them and then you do some more work in Photoshop but generally that's the technique to give them that sort of ethereal glowy feel you can also yank the clarity slider in Lightroom but that's kind of clunky and now it's like you can identify it pretty fast it's like oh the clarity slider look so it's a little more of a sophisticated way of getting that look this is it abarth so the green and the yellow notice how flat it makes the image feel when you have these analogous colors or harmonious and then you've complementary colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel these are going to feel more dynamic and they're going to create depth because they separate from each other who'da Barth again they start to pop I mean look how those red leaves look like they're popping out of the blue because they're complimentary also because they're high contrast with the white and the black that are surrounding them yellow in blue there looks it looks like that sky is very far away from that yellow tree because of that contrast and complementary colors so if you want to create depth or a dynamic feel think about finding colors that are complementary and now with post-processing it's very easy to take one color and turn it into another so here we have a couple things going on right we have the yellow and blue which are complementary and then we have the yellow and green which are analogous and notice how the yellow and green feel like they're blending together and the yellow and blue feel like there's depth again look at studio photography right what they were vain pan wasn't like I don't know put whatever colors in those glasses what do you got no he said I want some complementary colors right I want colors that are gonna separate from each other and feel dynamic sandy Skoglund right she builds these sets so this is not Photoshop she completely builds these sets and she quite often uses very contrasting complementary colors cyan and red blue and orange so I think you're getting the idea I can beat that one into the ground but okay so those are our elements of form right shape line texture color those are our building blocks now we have to arrange all these elements in a pleasing manner and why do we arrange them because we want to tell the viewer where to look right it's up to us to say what's the subject what do you want them to see and then we do this through composition and perspective okay I already did this but it's also good to hear again explore your subject first you have to identify it explore it isolate it organize your elements around it if there's something in the frame that's not supporting the subject get it out of there so perspective this is lost lo mejor Nagi who had was known for his very unique perspectives founded the Bauhaus school in Germany it's used to project an illusion of three dimensionality right certain perspectives can help create a sense of depth completely depend on the characteristic of light and different perspectives can tell different versions of the story right I mean we know that for sure hopefully our photo journalists aren't skewing the story too much documentary photographers are because they can so how does light affect perspective so now we're going to talk about where the eye likes to go in a photograph okay it's kind of just fact it's a little bit of physiology where the eye likes to go we like to go to bright areas first or eyes drawn to the bright areas my undergrad by the way is in physiology I had no idea that it would probably serve me later but it's pretty interesting so the light areas seem to come forward and dark areas seem to recede okay Sally man look at how the light areas are and then it's almost like you look in the light areas and then you start to search into the shadows if you don't want people to search in the shadows you block them up and you make them black right black with no detail you're not going to look there if you want detail and you want them to look there then leave some leave some density there so this is a whole get image out in Seattle and I was attracted to the dapples of light right and I knew that because there was a lot of texture here because these leaves were big in the foreground I knew that you would maybe start to go there and explore there and I wanted you to look up here so I really darkened it down here thick Holga already been yet but I later burned it down burned it down darkroom right because I wanted you to pass over that and go up here a new year I would go to the bright spots classic right Ansel Adams but look at the depth that's created with the way those trees are glowing now this light was clearly already there I guarantee you I guarantee you and so Adams worked this in the darkroom or I bet he I bet he added contrast I bet he lightened the trees and I bet he darkened this background he told me in a dream I know so this is a situation where I do a lot of self-portraits because sometimes there's no models around right um and this is this is part of a series I call me and trees but but with this one this was very flat light it was a very flat day okay and I wanted I knew I was going to wear yellow I knew I would stand out in the yellow and then what I did is notice and I'm not afraid to go heavy with post-processing I don't need my images to look realistic so I'm really heavily darkened all of this and I added you know in Photoshop they have the filter that's actually you can add lighting effects so I added what looks to be light glowing around me I knew that you would go to the area that's bright I knew you would go to the bright yellow color and that it's sharp of course everything's sharp and I put myself in that PowerPoint position which we'll talk about but mainly I manipulated the light later because the light was very flat so direct and and hard light okay so hard light creates hard shadows right the Sun the Sun when it's out without clouds is a hard direct light for this subject matter it works because this is a harsh environment right this is from the the Dust Bowl era this from the Great Depression we can see the texture we can see the lines we can see his worn hands and skin as opposed to soft light as a Robert Mapplethorpe a big soft box look at the difference in the shadows here you can't see into the shadows at all no detail at all hard lines here we can completely see into these shadows and there's almost no definition between where the highlight and the heart and the shadow is it's just soft okay soft light and hard light they feel very different which one do you want to use it's the first thing when these students walk into the studio and they're standing there they're like I don't know what light to use say okay do you want a softbox or you want a grid you want a hard light or soft light start with that this is my dog red classic montana light in the winter soft light cloudy overcast ok so this is I occasionally shoot weddings when someone ties me down and asked me - no I'm kidding I'd like them I just don't do them often but here's a situation where I'm the second shooter for my friend and the look at the light it's hard it was outside at this lake it was sunny it was yeesh and so I'm second shooter so I'm not I don't not having to get the primary portraits right so was I going to shoot their faces in this no no I was not because it wasn't up to me to get the diffuser out and all that stuff that was her when she was doing portraits so I tried to be creative and and use the light and shadow we're in this situation look at the beautiful soft light right super soft just great light you could just fire away in this stuff so the direction of light is important and this isn't a lighting course but I think it's important to have a basic understanding of hard versus soft and direction so here we have side light and hard light right here's the better half of Baryshnikov beside his foot so look at the hard light we know it's coming in from the side because this is much brighter than this and we can see that solid line it's almost directly that's a nice Rembrandt lighting there but solid line down here it's hard light coming in from the side backlight right now this situation we have a we know here's the key light it's right behind her I think it's a hard light because you can almost see the circular shape of the light right back hard light but they probably have something filling the front of her right because if that were the only light she would be silhouetted so there's either a big fill card so the lights coming through and bouncing or there's a secondary light that's softly filling her in okay yes uh-huh background well yeah it looks like there must be something on the background you know I don't think so because this is pretty that's pretty dark I think if there were a fill card over here well also we know this is Rembrandt lighting so it's got to be angled 45 degrees and up so we know that key lights come in from up there I'm guessing it doesn't look like there's a fill because these are so dark and deep and it does look like there's some light falling on the background for sure or he's really close to the backdrop so the lights falling on it right if we moved him away from it then the backdrop would go dark so I'm guessing it looks like to me so this would be a more characteristic back light right silhouetted and I'm guessing this is a big soft box that's meant to look like a window unless it's really a window okay but it's a large source that we can tell relative to that circular one behind the Polka Dot lady front light hard light so it doesn't matter where the subjects facing right it's front light and then it's hard light because look at how fast it falls off it goes from light to dark like that front light soft light this is Bill Allard National Geographic photographer lives in Missoula now seem round town all the time front light soft light we know it's soft because look there's I mean there's barely any shadows so you have a slight shadow under her chin and that's it gorgeous light backlight right and hard light the Sun so this is great because here we have a silhouette and then we have this beautiful rim light happening on this person's face because of where the model was placed so again not meant to be a you know lecture and lighting just I think it's good to think about with composition having a basic understanding so the other place our eyes like to go we like to go to bright areas and sharp areas so I travel a lot in the winter for work and I see a lot of hotel windows it can be depressing sometimes and so I really loved this soft foggy light that was happening here these curtains were not the cleanest curtains I had seen in the world so I knew I didn't want attention to be on them I just loved this skeletal tree just popping out on the back so I made that sharp and then made everything else really soft I knew your eye would would go there Irving Penn great great shot even though that's so big and close to the camera we look right by the cigarette cardi brace on by putting the focus exactly on this man he's even soft that's the first place we're going to go and then we're probably going to follow this line back here so again I wanted this sharp because I wanted the attention placed on the text we also like to go to text we read text so we have to be careful when there's signage or text in our images we read it I wanted it to be the main subject and then I wanted the wintery sort of background tree and sky to be the secondary subject so using selective focus throwing everything else out of the frame making it soft okay so I placed this papi down at the very bottom of the frame but I wanted it to be the only sharp element I was literally you know lying on a sunny day in a poppy field and I wanted to give that sense of that or you can in post-processing you can use a Gaussian blur okay so you can see I've blurred the edges a lot here or you know a Lensbaby you could use as well but I've blurred all of these edges because I wanted you to hopefully pay attention to this area where it looked like someone was laying or this sort of wrinkled area in the sheets so you can do it with a Gaussian blur - this is using I teach a class called scanner as a camera so using a flatbed scanner scanner flatbed scanners are great not only are they extremely sharp they're basically cameras right there recording images not only are they really sharp but they have a really shallow depth of field so anything on that glass is extremely sharp and then as soon as it gets away from the glass it goes soft immediately so this is something my friend had written and I literally took the sheet of paper put it on the scanner and I knew as soon as I pulled the rest of it away it would go soft so just techniques that we can use besides a shallow depth of field this is another Holga image and I worked this one really heavily in the darkroom and I knew that all of these reeds in the foreground could be distracting if they were bright because they're big and soft so I heavily darkened all of this down I knew that your eye would go to a place of texture and a place of high contrast and the place that was sharp so I tried to draw the eye right in there so colors warm colors and saturated colors seem to jump out at us cool colors and D saturated colors seem to jump back or recede okay again look at painting you know the painters don't choose colors in a willy-nilly manner right it's all about their color look at how his skin seems to be coming forward it's creating depth and how all the other colors are cool except for the red table okay like ask yourself what the first colors are that you see the warm ones are jumping out so this is an ad for the American Red Cross during World War one again a studio shot okay so yes they wanted the Red Cross it was red had to be red but they could have put any color hat on that model they put a complementary color they put a cool color and they threw it out of focus so look at how these warm and cool colors just create depth I mean it feels that that sky is just really far away from that mountain so again using them together in an image saturated and D saturated will create depth and we can do this very easily with our programs right so this is just I was staying with my mom before I got here and I shot this the other day and I just wanted to show you that I was lazy and didn't change my white balance so this is the image that I got okay I knew I wanted to crop a little bit I knew I had to fix that orange tungsten light but the other thing that I did is notice I balanced it and then I made the the images pinkish and made the wall bluish doesn't this one just feel flattered I knew that by making them this rose-colored plus I like the way that looked and making the wall very cyan that they would separate so a word on saturation I think and I don't know how experienced you all are all in the room but I think that as new photographers or even as old photographers sometimes we can get a little too hung up on saturating our colors there's a time and place for it also now that we know that that saturation and desaturation together in a frame create depth we can use that so one day I was laying in the park across from my house and I saw this scene I had my little you know junky point-and-shoot and I just took the shot got it back and this is one of the situations where I was attached to the experience the image isn't so great and I looked at it and I was like oh it's just boring it's so flat and I realized that all the colors were the same saturation so what I did is I D saturated the sky saturated the leaves just a little bit and look how suddenly now yeah it changes the mood it doesn't feel like this sunny day I could have held back on my sky looking gray but look at suddenly how depth has been created by dropping back that saturation on that blue okay it makes a big difference it's a it's a really powerful tool we have so this is an image of Tim Cooper's look at the difference when I took I just took his file and did this if when you I took the blue sky and I dropped it back I mean it looks like that mountains like popping out of the scene again I agree this is the way Tim wanted it to be seen I changed the feel of it this looks a little moody or a little stormy or a little more like impending doom right but to pay attention to that separation that's created when you have saturated and desaturate colors together this is a show that my friend Athena did it was all about dolls pay attention here look at the expression of the doll the body language of the doll and the colors and then pay attention to this one the expression the colors the body language okay here they're cool colors and they're d saturated and here this dolls happy they're bright saturated colors okay so we don't always just want to go and yank the saturation slider in one way or the other we can use them in conjunction with each other and we can also use them to change the mood okay this is down at the Outer Banks and this is how the day felt to me very gray very dark and so I made it I really do saturated this is film so here's an example of an image I shot for the magazine this is oops sorry this is how it came out of camera and this is what I did notice I really desaturated the greens saturated the red in the yellow and of course added contrast but I knew we're really drawn to bright green grass and bushes we'd like to look at that so I'll often desaturate the greens in my image if I don't want the attention to be there so by using these tools we know where the eye likes to go likes to go to bright areas sharp areas and saturation and D saturation and warm and cool colors create depth also where replace the subject and the frames very important right I mean we probably already know this one okay this is Laurel at insky pay attention to where your eye goes I'm guessing it goes here and then ask yourself why it's bright it's sharp it's colorful but in the grand scheme of the frame it's pretty small in the frame I mean she didn't have to fill the frame with these elements because she used those other tools sharp bright color this is an old Japanese photographer from the 20s I believe that the kids on the docker the subject but they're tiny in the frame so again our subject doesn't always have to be the biggest thing in the frame but the photographer used these lines to just lead you to this element right here and he was very careful with silhouettes to separate them if the boats were merging with the kids it would be not as pleasing if you're going to do a silhouette we need to see the full shape the full form of the silhouette okay so placement in the frame Princess Diana's funeral right the two places I think you're going to look are the color and the strong contrast and the strong vertical lines and they just keep going back and forth back and forth at this nice strong diagonal back and forth so this photographer used really harsh light he couldn't change this light right in a pretty creative way by creating these strong vertical contrasting lines and shadows okay so we're going to go to bright areas and sharp areas we're going to go to faces and look at this beautiful line and diagonally so scale and placement in the frame I like old things so I wanted the typewriter to be the main thing in here therefore I D saturated all the grass around it and weeds I made everything else soft I put it in a PowerPoint and then I have this dress hanging back here a new year I would go there because it was bright but I threw it out of focus but hopefully the intention is here first using all of those tools we talked about same deal I'm very small in the frame right and I'm doing this self portrait tripod run shoot run shoot this before I had an intervalometer right so I'm just trying and so I got this one and I liked what my position here but I noticed that I'm very small in the frame and I noticed down here there was it was bright it was large and there was texture so I threw a Gaussian blur on it and I darkened it down and I lowered the contrast all in here because I hope then that you'll just pass over that and go here same deal relatively speaking these little photos are very small to this large building but I put them in the foreground I threw the artificial light on them and I got down and put them big and tall in the foreground so just to talk a little bit about perspective I just thought it'd be interesting to take the same subject matter and look at it shot in many different ways so I thought okay portraits of kids would be easy there's so many of them out there just take a look I don't think I have to walk you through this talking just take a look at all the different perspectives being used to photograph the same subject matter and pay attention to things like the light and the sharpness and the post-processing treatment as well and how they change the feel of the photograph so really different perspectives on those some of them from the child's point of view some of them from the adults point of view some of them write down with the child others looking through things like the bubbles okay and then I just thought it'd be interesting to look at some classic historical photographers and interesting perspectives this is Tino Madadi so the perspective of looking down and up at something looking up or down over something this is Tina Madadi as well so thinking about moving around with your camera right I mean the the biggest test for students is throw on a fixed 50 and try to shoot with that for a week right suddenly you're not going to be standing there zooming any more you can't you have to move you have to get around plus the 50 mimics so it's a normal lens so it mimics our eye right so it can be boring so you have to get creative with a 50 if you shoot it just straight up it looks like how we see the world and we want photography to show us something different than how we see the world usually so throw on a fix 50 and challenge yourself to shoot with it for a week or a month you're going to have to move around and get different perspectives okay part three so we talked about the building blocks we talked about arranging the elements in the frame and now composition is basically this this arrangement but I just want to talk about this last section because we can't really talk about composition without talking about things like rule of thirds right but what I want to do is I want to show you these images and now that you've learned all of these tool visual design tools start asking yourself where's my eye going and why okay so notice the color the light the line the sharpness the brightness and start paying attention to where your eyes going shapes the texture will look at each of these in a second and break them down but I just wanted you to kind of look with everything you've learned so far now you're going to start to realize you know if you're one of those people who looks at other people's photographs and goes oh they're so good they do it they work it right not only they shoot a lot but they're working the composition that's another thing try different perspectives you know I hate when I see my students go and shoot something and they take five shots and they walk away and it's like well what are the chances even the greatest photographer if you only take five shots or one angle or one perspective or one lens you got you got to work a subject right okay so let's take a look we all know probably the rule of thirds right we have taker frame break it into thirds we have one-third another third another third and then we have a third third third okay where the lines intersect are called power points they're very dynamic places to put the subject that's why you always see a person sort of thrown off to the side it's dynamic if you want dynamic do that if you don't then don't so let's take a look at some of these images you're going to start to see that this is used all the time and this is to the point once you become a you know pretty skilled photographer you're just doing it intuitively you're not you're not thinking about it but you have a rule of thirds grid on your camera so if you need to use it use it so look at look at how the place that we the warm area the sharp area the light area goes right through the PowerPoint here we have imagine there's a horizon in every image it doesn't have to be the outside horizon here our horizon is the difference between this carpet or texture and the rest of the scene so the horizon is put on the top third not smack-dab in the middle and we have all of these shapes in the lower 2/3 and then notice we have the stairs in a PowerPoint okay we have PowerPoint PowerPoint strong diagonal PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint now did this photographer could they do this with these flying birds no this is Elizabeth stone again however I guarantee you she fired off 50 shots and then cropped it to get a dynamic composition so that the birds are in these strong points also when things are on the edge of the frame it gives a sense of chaos or disorder when things are going off the frame so sometimes we have to do it in post-processing we might not be able to catch it exactly look at this light going right through these two powerpoints chairs and PowerPoint horizon in lower third trail that we follow ending close to a PowerPoint two-thirds one-third two-thirds one-third person on the third line tree tucked in the third line texts on the PowerPoint okay so just start keeping an eye out for that so we can create different different feelings with our with our tools that we have now we can make something feel like it has movement or make something feel static and we've talked about how to do that one of the ways is a slow shutter speed blurring this was actually I was doing video it was back in the days of mini mini MIDI DV tapes and a little girl I was at a carousel and a little girl ran in front of my lens that's why it's all blurred she was running and I just liked it as a still where we can make something feel static okay this has symmetry lots of vertical lines D saturated colors not a lot of diagonals static we can create movement the feel of movement this movement is created by light and shadow there's nothing actually moving in the frame but we have strong diagonals intersecting it PowerPoint intersecting a PowerPoint light and shadow I like this shot because I think most people are inclined to shoot the ocean in a very in a way that makes it feel very dynamic but this feels very static because one we have the bullseye the subjects are smack dab in the middle of the frame we have the man reclining we have a fast shutter speed that's freezing the water and then we have black and white so all of the tools make it feel static which is I think what the photographer was going for or creating movement dynamic we can create harmony or discord with all these tools so I hope you see what I'm doing we talked about the main elements how to arrange and now we're talking about how we can make the photo feel different by using all these different tools would you say harmony or discord yeah just a little bit right yeah you know that's a good question it does look like it would be or worth or would but I'm not sure so we have all these strong verticals and then we have this you know sometimes we can give a perspective that will distort things and throw things off and leave the viewer going huh and that might be what you want right or harmony we have analogous colors we have a foggy atmosphere we have very strong vertical lines soft plush green grass or bushes harmony the blue color no complementary colors here monochromatic and then the window frame right in the center of the frame versus discord right this is Nan Goldin the red color adds to the feeling of discord the body language the angles the light probably a little bit of discord mostly from this the models position but also the bright light the contrast the hard light we can include things in the frame or we can exclude things in the frame here the photographer's chosen to include the scenes so we know what's going on if this was just an image of this woman like right here we wouldn't even know what was happening no she's being abducted by aliens what's going on okay but the the photographer decided to include the scene so we can see what's happening as opposed to excluding the scene and abstracting it a little bit by throwing it out of focus and not including the entire figure or room including the scene this is Charlie Chaplin entertaining so we have the perspective of seeing the faces of the crowd that tells a certain story and tucking Charlie Chaplin and his mate over to the left making them large in the frame a large depth of field versus excluding what do you think this is a photograph of what event yeah we don't know that we don't see coffins we don't see funeral procession we don't see a hearse but there's a few elements we see tears so we assume grief right we see the red flower that's a really strong symbol in there and we see the black hat in reality though you know she's not wearing black I mean it probably is right but point is is that this is a very simple scene with just a few elements the tearful face the red flower the black hat tell the story she's sharp she's not her eyes are closed so we're not going to look at her as much we want to make eye contact support of Edward Weston so including some information we see him with his camera as opposed to excluding in a portrait now it's about this connection between this hand and this woman so it's up to you how much information you want to include or exclude we can document a scene or we can abstract it this is Robert Frank including a lot of elements in the scene great depth of field strong diagonal lines documenting the scene as he sees it or abstracting this is Man Ray okay it's a human form but it might look like the shape of a bull's head right horns in a steer using light to abstract the scene this is a picture of trees this is an abstract picture of a tree picture of a flower pretty pretty straightforward document or an abstract of the same flower through perspective lens flare camera position straight document of an old woman abstract of an old woman these are my friends down at Virginia Beach to me this is a document of a walk on the beach to me this is an abstract of a walk on the beach okay so you can choose how do you what do you want to say how do you want to show your images framing versus negative space here we have a lot of negative space right this makes them feel lost isolated I mean it could feel isolated or it could feel like possibilities I'm not sure but if this frame were just them right here it would feel very different so all this negative space and putting them small in the frame adds to that feeling this is just framing up the subject the perspective is me on on the other chair from behind but I put it smack-dab in the middle but I have all these strong diagonal lines coming in or using negative space okay negative space just kind of gives the viewer some room to breathe it gives a certain feel yes yeah I think it makes it feel really static I think if they were coming in from here they would give this sense that they have room to go and it would feel more dynamic I think if they were over here leaving the frame there'd be a lot of tension generally when people are walking out of the frame it gives tension and when people are walking into the frame there's room to move so it feels dynamic it can feel welcoming I think by putting them smack dab in the middle it feels really static to me this image from the way it's been composed it doesn't feel welcoming and of course this is all our personal perspectives right if you're a bicyclist who does the sort of riding it's going to feel great to you but the way it's composed makes it feel a little desolate isolated but I think that adds to the static feel so negative space this is down at the Outer Banks and the Outer Banks is about Mother Nature you know a mother nature comes and sucks those houses in the ocean on a regular basis so I wanted them to feel small relative to that big dark looming sky filling the frame with your subject it's Frida Kahlo versus using negative space and then again look at painting filling the frame or negative space how it feels different filling the frame I love that shot geremy lurgy oh the dogs like let's go already negative space richard ms rug okay so a quick word on exposure and mood I think I'm get until the end here's close to the end here but I think I want to talk just a little bit about thinking about your exposure in the field should always be that I just say should always be happy I said I'd never say I said I'd never say never right but we want to get our exposure right in the field okay but we have the we have post-processing that we can work with and it doesn't always have to be the exposure the way you saw it in the scene right so take this image think about the words that describe this image and then all I did is I took the exposure slider and I darkened it tremendously okay it completely changes the feel of the photograph my point is is there's no right or wrong here it's your intention how do you want the photograph to look okay whoops how do you want it to feel how do you want it to look okay here's another example here's that harmonious soft look what happened when I darkened it tremendously looks a little more foreboding not as welcoming right so think about exposure and changing the mood this is one it's like we go into a festival in the woods let's go this one I'm like no I don't think I want to go with you you go ahead I'll be back here in the fringe of the forest okay so this is a very high key image bright light this is very dark and foreboding notice how here you can maybe look off into the distance and hear not so much okay so just just think about yanking that slider a little bit and seeing how you can change the mood of your photograph okay post-processing is our friend for sure deciding on color or black and white color versus black and white well black and white can do some things it can abstract the image because it takes it away from reality it focuses more on form so those elements we talked about line shape texture when you eliminate color it becomes about those so if you're going to go to black and white it becomes about line shape texture and light so those elements need to be extremely strong if you're going to go to black and white so look at this one you're just following that path down the trail this one you can't see the end of the trail feels very different okay here's one I thought going the opposite direction again this is Tim Cooper's I just like taking his files and working with him without telling him but I decided to yank this the other way and look what I got out of it so Tim worked it this way I'm guaranteeing you do not guarantee I'm guessing Tim's shot it this way and did this in the darkroom okay so bye-bye post-processing and working our images we can totally change the feeling of the photograph and all of these tools because you might ask yourself what's the point of all this the point is to express an idea or create a mood with our photographs okay so these are the tools we use right we have these we have these shapes we talked about shapes we talked about line we talked about color if she were in a black jacket it would feel very different okay we talked about negative space placement in the frame the tension of someone walking out of a frame the muted gray colors cool colors something in a PowerPoint look at our two-thirds one-third or two-thirds one-third start asking yourself how a photograph feels and what elements were being used to make it feel that way and you're going to start to identify all of these tools and and they're yours to use so just to sum up the questions you might want to ask yourself is what is my subject how do I want my photograph to feel and what do I want to say and if you say I don't want to say anything then like I said it might just be I want to show the scene in the beautiful light and the way I saw it okay so dig into your toolbox and craft your image okay we're for craftsmen we make the image look and feel the way we want it to we're not just slave to the environment okay we have all of these tools that we can use so I just wanted to finish up by if you're interested in these sorts of topics and I guess you are because you're here topics about the aesthetic side of photography the creative side of photography this is the magazine that I publish it's a quarterly magazine it's called butterflies and anvils a photographic journal about inspiration and art so it's about 80 pages and I interview a different artist every issue the interview for the artist is 40 pages of it so it's a big hunk of it I feature their work and I ask them questions about creativity and how they stay inspired and when what are you doing when your ideas come to you and how do you get an idea for a project and then on and on there's also creative writing in there there's articles about photography similar to the articles if you've read any my articles on the B&H insights blog in those in that vein sort of exploring this this creative side of photography so it's through and it's through an online publishing company so if you're interested in it you can go to my blog of the same name butterflies and anvils and then I always have a link I always have the cover of the latest issue on the top right you just click to that and it takes you to a company called mag cloud and you you order it from them they print it they ship it so it's a print on demand sort of thing so if you're interested in these sorts of topics and then I you know I have some fliers up here they're just about other workshops and classes that I teach most of them are in this vein although I do teach some like basic photography classes or alternative printing classes around the country but I also want to put hee I have a sign-up sheet here unfortunately mad cloud doesn't do subscriptions yet and I'm trying to figure out how I can take that upon myself and do subscriptions to the magazine because as it is now you have to go by an issue and then wait till I post the nest issue and then by that issue which isn't that bad but you just got to keep thinking about it right so if you're interested if you think you would be interested in the next year for 2012 in a subscription to the magazine put your name and email here and then when I figure it out I can email you and offer that to you and I would of course it would be at a discounted rate than less than what it would cost you to buy each issue so any questions on anything those are just some of the schools that I teach for and then that's just my information for more information please visit us online give us a call or stop by our New York City superstore you can also connect with us on the web

Channel: B&H Photo Video

Views: 310,822

Keywords: visual, Eileen, badh, B&H, composition, BH Photo, photo, event, pro, and, Rafferty, design, bh, audio, photography, color, space, bh photo, BH Photo Video, bhvideos, theory, video

Id: o9RQ6YPVWhA

Length: 100min 15sec (6015 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/redditRoss]

I've only watched a few other classes like this, but this one did the best job of actually showing you lots of photographs and different versions of photographs to illustrate the concepts.

I really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing.