Shape: elements of visual design, part 2

This month's Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge is focusing in on the basic elements of composition: line, shape, form or volume, texture, and color. This week your challenge is to pay attention to shape. See how thinking about shapes can help you grow in your photography. (Click here to read part 1, The Line.)

Shape

Photography, by its very nature, takes a three-dimensional world and renders it in two dimensions. A study of shape moves us from the one-dimensional focus of the line and the curve to the two-dimensional focus of the shape of an object or subject. With shape, think outline, think silhouette. (A further study of light and shadow will add the third dimension: form or volume, which we will study next week.)

There are three basics shapes in visual design: the circle, the square, and the triangle. The trick to seeing and working with shapes in your photography relies on your ability to concentrate on the shape of your subject, as divorced from the reality of what your subject is. Let us take a look at each of these three basic shapes and how to recognize and use them in your photography.


The Circle

A true circle is a rare shape, one that is found far more often in constructed, man-made environments than in natural ones. A circle symbolizes balance, symmetry. A mathematical circle is perfectly round and flawlessly even. Many natural objects that we think of as circles are not. Children may draw apples, pumpkins, and the moon as circles but in reality these objects are more-often imitations of true circles.

Finding and photographing circles often takes on a level of abstraction. Only the right angle, the right position, or the right perspective will allow your viewer to register "circle" when looking at a certain subject. Spend some time with your subject, moving around, looking high, and looking low, and see how the shape or shapes you see changes as you move. Only when you find the shape that you want, should you take the photograph.

The Square

The square is another shape that is common in the constructed world. Most buildings and structures contain squares or rectangles. Squares can convey a feeling of balance and symmetry, like circles, but they are anchored to their straight sides. Squares are blocky and hold more visual weight as well. Differing sizes of squares in a photograph can give a sense of distance or perspective.

The Triangle

The triangle as a shape is the least pleasing of the three. Triangles are pointy and often unbalanced, signaling danger or fear. Mountains can often be glossed as triangles. You can also use perspective and vanishing points to create triangles in your image. Roads leading off into the distance or buildings looked at from below, can seem to converge into triangular shapes.

How Will You Use Shape?

Practice trying to see your composition as shapes and not as subjects. Do not see pebbles on the beach; see circles. Do not see buildings; see squares and rectangles. Do not see mountains; see triangles. Abstract yourself from the definitions of what you are photographing and try to see the underlying shape or shapes.

Then, share what you have discovered! You can share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

The Line: elements of visual design, part 1

This month's Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge is focusing in on the basic elements of composition: line, shape, form or volume, texture, and color. This week your challenge is to pay attention to the line or lines in your world, your compositions, and your photographs. See how thinking about lines can help you grow in your photography.

The Line

Mathematically-speaking, a line is a straight path between two points, but photographically-speaking, we are going to bend that definition a bit to also include curves. Lines appear in many different ways and circumstances in photography, both obvious and more obscure. Let's begin by thinking about different types of lines: horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and curves.


Horizontal Lines

Horizontal lines are quite common in the world and in photography, and one of the most common is the horizon itself. Depending on your location, the horizon may not appear as a simple horizontal line, as it is often broken up or hidden from view by trees, buildings, or other things. Even so, you need to take your horizon line into consideration when shooting (or be willing to fix it later during post-processing).

In most circumstances, you want to be sure to keep your horizon line level. Level horizontal lines provide a feeling of stability and balance. Our eyes can detect even a few degrees of slant in a horizon, and this kind of photograph can give the viewer a sense of unease or feeling off-balance. If you deliberately want to use a tilted horizon in a photograph, a more dramatic tilt often works better than a subtle one.

Buildings and other structures are another source of horizontal lines in photographs. If you are shooting a building head-on, for example, you would expect the horizontal lines to remain straight and horizontal in your final image. If you are shooting a building from an oblique angle, then you will start the notice the impact of perspective and the possibility of leading lines or a clear vanishing point in your image. You can read more about Leading Lines here.

Vertical Lines

Vertical lines can convey growth, and they are often used to show power or prominence or a sense of scale and height. Vertical lines are often found naturally in trees or other tall plants or can be inferred in situations like the moon's light trail, below.

It can be very difficult to keep vertical lines vertical in your photographs. Perspective can lead to the appearance of converging verticals, and this is especially a problem if you are down low, looking up at your subject or up high, looking down. If you want to keep your vertical lines looking vertical, you need to shoot your subject head-on and from a farther distance away. Backing up and using a longer focal length on your lens will help keep your verticals looking straight. Read more about converging verticals in the article on Photographing Architecture: watch your lines.

Diagonal Lines

Diagonal lines are dynamic. They can convey a feeling of energy and movement. Diagonal lines are often used the lead the eye through the image.

In this photograph, the diagonal placement of the path leads the viewer's eye through the image, directly to the location of the walking person. The person's movement is mimicked by this movement of the eye.

Curves and S-Curves

Curves are technically not lines, but they fit this challenge due to their 2-dimensional nature. Curves are often found in nature and are pleasing to the eye. The s-curve is a particular type of curve, commonly found in meandering rivers or paths. Curves also lead the eye through an image, like diagonal lines, but their curved shape can convey more calm.

How Will You Use the Line?

As a fellow photography instructor once summarized, "You already knew all of this. Now try to think of it consciously before you hit that little black button."

Think about your line(s) this week. Are you seeking out straight horizontal lines? Do you want to use a vertical line or lines to send a message? How could you use a diagonal line to send a message? What could you do with a gentle curve? Share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Composition: Framing

The concept of "Framing" is the fifth and final composition topic this month for the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The previous topics this month were the Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, Fill the Frame, and Orientation.

Composition and Framing

The term "frame" in photography refers to the border of your photograph. Everything that is "within the frame" is what you see in your final image. (Incidentally, Within the Frame is also the title of an amazing photography book by David DuChemin that focuses on vision and motivation, as well as detailed information about shooting different travel situations: people, places, and culture.)

Framing is the use of an element within your photograph that provides a visible frame within the borders (frame) of the photograph itself. A frame-within-the-frame, as it were.

The idea behind framing is that a frame provides another layer to your photograph and the story that you are telling. A frame can limit the viewer by drawing their eyes towards and through the frame. A frame can also add a sense of place or context to the rest of the photograph - a landscape view can be contextualized as the view through your hotel window, for example.

View from within our tent of the Badlands of South Dakota 

There is an unlimited supply of elements that could be used to create a frame within your photograph, but the most common include architectural elements like windows and doorways and natural elements like trees and branches.

Man-Made Frames

Architecture is a great source of elements to use for framing an image within your image. Windows and doors are commonly used to add interest or direct your eye when viewing a photograph. (You can read more about photographing through windows in the article Window on the World.)

The series of sunset shots, above, were taken from the top of the Astronomical Tower in Prague, Czech Republic. The unframed version (top) provides a more expansive view of the city and the sunset and was shot by leaning myself and the camera out through the window slits. In the framed version (bottom), the inclusion of the masonry arch adds another layer of depth and context to the image. Now the viewer sees the context where the photograph is being taken (from the tower) and the foreground of the frame draws the viewer through the window and into the background of the city and the sunset. (In an ideal world, I would have used a tripod and a narrower aperture to get the entire photograph front-to-back in focus.)

This photograph was taken through the windshield of our minivan while traveling in Jordan. The frame of the inside of the car, as well as the decorative fringe and air freshener, add to the sense of place and gives the viewer the feeling of being inside the van as well. The juxtaposition of urban (edges of Amman) and rural (the horse) also add to what is going on in this photograph.

Frames and Framing in Nature

Think beyond architecture, and you will find a wide-range of frames and framing elements in nature as well. Trees and branches are commonly used a frames and can add a sense of depth an interest to a photograph or scene.

This series of photographs of a Great Blue Heron comes from one of my all-time favorite sunrise shots. I had given myself an extra 20 minutes on my commute in to work that morning and was stunned by the amazing mist and fog off the lake, contrasting with the bright rays of the morning sun. The heron and its unique silhouette was the perfect bonus.

I took a wide range of shots, experimenting with composition in general and framing in particular. While I loved the interplay of light and shadow in the first photograph (top), I found that the addition of the framing elements of the tree trunks on the sides and the branches above (bottom) really added to the storytelling power of the image and accentuated the brilliant colors of the morning. Now there are three clear zones: the foreground silhouettes of the trees and heron; the midground interest of the lake, fog, and ducks; and the background shapes of the trees and sky.

A frame can also be used to give the viewer the sense of "being there" themselves. The photograph above, from Milford Sound in New Zealand, grounds the viewer with the photographer - standing on the edge of the fjord, peaking through the trees.

Summary: Use a Frame

Using a frame within your photograph is a creative way to add interest and expand on the storytelling abilities of your image. Pay attention to the architectural and natural elements around you that could lend themselves well to an interesting framing image. Experiment with different angles, views, and compositions to find out what works the best for you. And always remember to have fun with it!

(Looking to grow more in your photography? Consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.)

Composition: Orientation

The concept of "Orientation" is the fourth composition topic this month for the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The previous topics this month were the Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, and Fill the Frame.

Composition and Orientation

In photography, orientation refers to the way you take and display your photographs. The vast majority of photographs from DSLR and point-and-shoot cameras are taken with a 'landscape' or horizontal orientation, where the photograph is longer than it is tall, while the advent of cell phone cameras and sites like Pinterest have helped bring attention to the less common 'portrait' or vertical orientation, where a photograph is taller than it is wide. Even the terms that we use to refer to this orientations - landscape and portrait - imply that some subjects are better suited to one orientation than another.

The point of spending a week focusing on orientation is to help you to remember that you have a choice. Many of us are so "programmed" to use our camera in its default orientation that we rarely think to turn it sideways and explore another view. Even cell phone camera users are seen to turn their phones sideways to snap horizontal photographs almost by default, even though their actual default orientation is vertical.

Before you even take a photograph this week, stop and ask yourself why you are using the orientation you are in that moment. Is there a compositional or photographic reason for it or is it simply the orientation your camera had when you picked it up to start shooting? If you don't have a reason for it, don't start shooting. Take that extra moment to consider the question of orientation and what would best fit the photograph and composition that you want to capture.

Orientation in Action: go vertical!

I will readily admit that my photographs are more commonly taken using a horizontal or landscape orientation. But the more time I spend reading about, learning about, and exploring my photographic journey, the more I try to push myself to consider orientation when composing my shots. The following series of photographs are some comparison images of times when orientation made a measurable impact.

Want to capture this style of image? Read Long Exposure Photography at the Fair(e).

I had been out shooting at a carnival with the local photography group. The image above represents my initial composition for this scene, as I like the combination of the two rides: the YoYo flying swings and the Ferris Wheel in the background. A horizontal orientation worked well here to capture much of the extent of the YoYo ride and its spinning swirl of lights. I realized, however, that I could tell a different story if I tried a vertical orientation.

Recomposing the shot (still from the same location) allowed me to include the carnival-goers in the scene. The long exposure (5 seconds) led most of the people to be blurry, but I especially liked the contrast between their motion and movement with the stock-still standing of the man in yellow. While the vertical orientation cut off more of the lights from the ride, it allowed me to tell a fuller story in one photograph.

The horizontal orientation is colloquially called "landscape" for a reason. Many, many landscape and nature photographs are shot in landscape, as this orientation allows you to feature a wide view of a scene. In this photograph, the prairie flowers are featured in the forefront, with a little additional interest provided by the trees and water tower in the background.

Using the vertical (portrait) orientation completely transforms the feeling of the same scene. Now the prairie flowers are closer, larger, and draw more attention. The vertical orientation also elongates the feeling of depth in the image and gives a much more wide angle feel to the view (even though both shots were taken with the same point-and-shoot camera and focal length). A great example of how "landscape" orientation is not always the best option for your "landscape" photograph!

While you should always consider your orientation when shooting, you can also play around with changing the orientation afterwards in post-processing. While out shooting this sunrise over the Madison capitol and skyline, I experimented with a number of different orientations, focal lengths, and compositions through the progress of the sunrise.

In this particular image (SOOC on top), I realized that all of the blank gray-blue of the clouds was not really adding to the photograph and that I really wanted to feature the reflections of the sun in the water.

My final, vertical crop is shown, both as it appeared on the original image, and the final, cropped image. The vertical orientation features the long, vertical sunrise reflection (and light in the sky), while the closer crop allows you to better see and appreciate the Capitol silhouette and the two small birds in the sky.

Orientation: Summary

Do not let your photographs be defined by the default way that you hold your camera or camera-phone. Make orientation a conscious part of your photo-making process. Before you press the shutter, think about whether the orientation you are using is the best to for the subject you have chosen.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking all landscape shots must be horizontal or that all portrait shots must be vertical. The more thought you give to your image beforehand, the better your final photograph will be!

(Looking to grow more in your photography? Consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.)

Composition: Fill the Frame

The concept of "Fill the Frame" is the third composition topic this month for the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The previous topics this month were the Rule of Thirds and Leading Lines.

What is the Frame and Why Fill It?

Here, the frame refers to the edges of your photograph or the edges of the viewfinder of your camera when you are shooting. The advice to fill the frame means to get in close, to make your subject a significant portion of the final photograph.

This advice is articulated in a lot of different ways, most recently in the admonishment to beginning photographers to "Get close. Then get closer." (This particular wording featured third in the recent article The Most Valuable Photography Tips Ever on Digital Photography School. Check it out for some other great composition and photography advice.) As Valerie explains, "Photographers tend to leave too much ‘stuff’ around their subject. The viewer gets lost in the chaos and doesn’t know where to look. Less is often more."

Fill the frame encourages you, as a photographer, to really spend some time thinking about your subject and how best to feature that subject in your photograph. How can you bring forward the details or the patterns or the most critical element(s) of your subject? How does the background add to or take away from the story that you are trying to tell?

Once you think you can answer those questions, compose and take your photograph. Then get closer, whether by zooming in your lens or moving yourself physically closer with your feet. Take another photograph. Compare the two and see whether filling the frame made a difference for your composition in that situation.

A good tip for whether you have filled the frame - does your subject spill out of the frame and beyond the bounds of your photograph? If so, then you are truly beginning to fill the frame.

Fill the Frame: examples

The following collection of shots walks you through the process of identifying a subject and then continuing to explore that subject photographically while trying to consider filling the frame.

My initial impulse after encountering this incredible field of sunflowers was to get the wide angle shot above. This photograph establishes the context of the subject - the farm house, the size of the field, and the darkening clouds in the sky. The sunflowers themselves, however, are only a small portion of the entire image. Now to think about filling the frame.

I decided to narrow my composition down to a cluster of sunflowers, and I chose to zoom with my feet as well as with my lens. I moved in closer to the sunflowers and got down lower, to better emphasize their height. This lower shooting position also helped simplify the composition and emphasized the contrast between the bright colors of the sunflowers and the darker colors of the clouds. (This follows another of my favorite pieces of photography advice - Remember the Background and Move Your Feet.)

But I could still get closer. Next I narrowed the composition even further to a single sunflower. Here I used the off-center placement favored by the Rule of Thirds to feature the flower and the bee I had discovered busily crawling around inside. I used a longer focal length on my zoom lens (around 220 mm in this case) and a wider aperture to isolate the flower from the background and to render the background sunflowers as bokeh blur. (Read more about What a Wide Aperture Can Do for You.)

Yet there was still closer to go. Now my zoom lens was racked out to its farthest focal length (270 mm), and the center of the sunflower so filled the frame of my viewfinder that it spilled off out of the frame on two sides. My subject was no longer 'field of sunflowers' or 'group of sunflowers' or even 'sunflower.' It had become bee and sunflower and pattern and color and more.

Summary: Fill the Frame

Now, I am not saying that "Fill the Frame" is advice that makes sense in every photographic situation. That last photograph might not have even been your personal favorite of the series. But what matters is the process of photographic exploration and a willingness to experiment with composition. There are many, many situations where you can improve your photograph by getting closer, by moving in, and by filling the frame. By keeping that possibility in the back of your mind when shooting, you may find yourself making and capturing photographs you might not have taken before. And you may be impressed by what you find! (Consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.)

Composition: Leading Lines

The concept of "Leading Lines" is the second composition topic this month for the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The first topic this month was the Rule of Thirds.

What are Leading Lines?

Lines are a powerful element of composition in photography (and in many other forms of art as well). Lines can convey balance, motion, scale, perspective, and more.

The concept behind the technique of leading lines is to use the visual power of the line to draw your viewers into your photograph. The more a person feels visually drawn into to an image, the more time they will spend examining and appreciating it.

These columns from the Mayan site of Chichen Itza demonstrate the power of leading lines. This composition has a series of leading lines, as both the tops and the bottoms of the two rows of columns march off into the distance. As they recede in size, our brain knows to interpret this change as a result of the vast distance and depth of the original site.

We are drawn visually toward what is known as the vanishing point, or the seeming point at which all of these lines converge. This is what gives us the sense of scale and three-dimensional perspective in a two-dimensional image. (Read more about perspective and converging lines in the article Photographing Architecture: Watch Your Lines.)

Leading lines can do more than add depth to an image; they can also direct your viewer where to look.

The ancient and modern cities of Jerash, Jordan

In this photograph from the ancient city of Jerash, lines of columns are again used to create leading lines. Once again, your eye is drawn in to the center of the image, as the ancient road converges on the modern city. The strong pull of these lines directs you to see the contrasts between the two cities, as they appear to seamlessly blend from the ancient into the modern right near the center of the photograph.

Leading lines are not limited to drawing the eye towards the center of your composition, however. Lines at strong angles can grab your viewer's attention to any location within your photograph.

Here in the Prague subway system, the strongly angular lines converge towards the tunnel on the far left, creating a dynamic composition. The wider aperture (f/3.5) creates the shallow depth of field, and the increasing blur as your eyes move towards the tunnel further accentuates the feeling of movement.

Think beyond literal lines too when you are trying to incorporate leading lines into your composition. In the photograph of the fort Qasr Azraq, above, the line of Jordanian flags serves to guide the eye down into the image and towards the arrow slit above the sign and main entrance. This serves as a subtle reminder of the original defensive purpose of the fort and makes sure that this feature does not go by unnoticed.

Curves as an Element of Composition

While not, mathematically-speaking, lines, curves can serve many of the same compositional roles as leading lines. Curves can also be used to pull your viewer into your image, to establish a feeling of depth, and to guide your viewers' eyes around your photograph. In the photograph below, the curve of the walking path serves to draw you into the image and make you feel like you are interacting with the scene yourself. The use of the tree to block 'what's around the bend' from view adds a sense of mystery and invitation to the image.

How will you use leading lines or curves in your photographs this week? Consider joining the #BYP52Weeks Google+ Community to share your photographs and see what others are coming up with for each weekly theme.

Composition: Rule of Thirds

For the month of June the Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge will be looking at different composition techniques. (Join the Google+ Community to share your weekly photographs and receive feedback.) The "Rule of Thirds" is one of the most commonly cited of the rules of photography composition, so it makes sense to begin here.

What is the Rule of Thirds?

This image of Castle Geyser is also available for purchase.

The Rule of Thirds is a simple piece of composition advice: take your scene and divide it into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. Now you have nine boxes and four points of intersection between your divisions. Use these points as guidelines for where to locate your subject within your photograph.

With the photograph of Castle Geyser, above, you can see that the bottom third of the image contains the foreground and reflection of the geyser, the middle third contains the background and the geyser itself, and the upper third contains more of the sky. The peak of the spray is located near the upper-right intersection point, while the base of the geyser is located at the lower-right point.

The graphic above offers a comparison of two different compositions of the same sunset, shot within a few moments of each other. The top composition has the sun centered vertically in the image, while the bottom composition has aligned the sun and the silhouette of the Capitol building at the lower two points, according to the Rule of Thirds. This version provides a more balanced composition, placing the two main focal points equally within the frame.

You can also think about the Rule of Thirds simply as either a horizontal guide or a vertical one. This photograph from the Badlands in South Dakota shows a rule of the horizontal Rule of Thirds: the bottom third contains mainly the gray rock, the middle third contains the formations, and the top third contains the sky. Locating the variations in the formations near the intersection points also helps add to the composition.

You can also think about the Rule of Thirds after the fact. The original image was shot using the maximum zoom available to me at the time, and I knew that I would want to crop the image later to better emphasize the lone camel at sunrise. Using the Rule of Thirds, I chose the composition shown below, which brings much more focus and attention to the camel and also provides a good horizontal division between the foreground sand in the bottom third and the background formations and sky.

This image is also available for purchase.

As with any advice, the Rule of Thirds are meant to be "more like guidelines" than a strict answer for what you must do every time. With the sunrise silhouette image above, I placed the horizon firmly in the middle to balance the sky and the reflections in the clouds. While the Capitol and the crew team are near-ish to the intersection points, it is not exact, nor should it be every time.

Don't miss an opportunity to bend the rules ... or even break them!

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.