Composition
Skill One: Identifying them.
There are 16 different elements in composition. Being able to recognize them when taking a picture is key. These are the 16:
Center of Interest: the thing that originally caught your interest. Possible to have more then one, but make one more prominant.
Rule of thirds
Converging lines: draws the eyes around and around
Repeating lines: man made are odd to capture correctly.
Diagonal lines: allows the person to view in a circular fashion.
"S" curve: ie. river
"3"s: any combination of 3 things
Foreground: what is sharp close to you.
Background: what is sharp or not further from you.
Direction: you want movement or imaginary movement to get the viewer down into the photograph
Balance
Color: only two types- warm or cool, know when and how to filter out or in certain colors.
Framing: use objects (ie tree branches and door frames) to block out unwanted background.
Flow: mich like direction
Clutter: useless bits of the background into center of interest.
Negative Space
Skill Two: How to use them
When using the elements you have to be careful. First of all you have to be able to find them around you, a picture with out any elements is boring and uninteresting. However conversely a picture with to many is cluttered and to confusing for the veiwer. Usually anymore then 3 or 4 gets confusing and cluttered.
One of my first assignments was to find as many elements as I could and take interesting pictures of them.
Back To Main Page | Back to Photography
