Mon, June 28th, 2004 by Jasmin
Hi, all. I've been reading this blog for a long time, and it's my first time posting here, mainly because I saw some tips from John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide and wanted to share them.
Though these tips are for nature photography, I thought that they applied to everything else too.
Compositional Do's
- Please yourself first, not someone else.
- Wander around to find the best subject.
- Handhold your camera to find the best composition, then set up your tripod.
- Preview the depth of field.
- Check for background distractions.
- Check the edges of the frame for distracting brightly-lit hotspots.
- Check for merging tonalities and objects accidentally sticking up into the frame.
- Control or enhance the light if needed.
- Be deliberate about camera placement and lens selection.
- Position your camera as the subject matter dictates, not as your knees or back want you to.
- Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Compositional Don'ts
- Do not photograph the first subject you find; look for the best subject.
- Do not mount your camera on your tripod before you've found a good composition.
- Do not extend your tripod legs until you've found your subject and composition
- Do not photograph contrasty subjects in bright sunlight.
- Do not bull's-eye your subject in the frame.
- Do not tilt horizons or place them running through the middle of the frame.
- Do not try to capture everything with one picture.
- Do not photograph low objects from a high perspective.
- Do not let objects barely touch the edge of the frame.
- Do not pick a flower (or harass an animal) to move it to a better spot (with the exception of humans, lol)
These are practical tips for good photographs but sometimes you tend to forget them in your haste.
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June 28th, 2004 at 11:55 pm
do not forget to forget the rules
June 29th, 2004 at 12:04 am
I agree with Milo; without the tilted horizon, the photographic world would be a duller place
June 29th, 2004 at 12:20 am
There are only three things needed to make a great photo.
1 Good composition
2 Good light
3 A moment
June 29th, 2004 at 12:36 am
There are only two things required to take a great photo.
1 A "camera"
2 Someone to point that camera in the right direction
June 29th, 2004 at 12:51 am
Here's one I keep hearing: "If the picture isn't good enough, you're not close enough".
Meh. Follow your nose, look through the lens, don't be afraid to take bad pictures.
June 29th, 2004 at 1:08 am
... and make sure that when something strikes you, take a picture or two before you start futzing with your gear.
Just in case you get lucky.
June 29th, 2004 at 1:16 am
Does forcing my toddler to pretend to play with a toy cow for 45 minutes while I attempt to frame a certain shot constitute harrassing an animal?
June 29th, 2004 at 2:34 am
... and remember, sometimes you can break all the rules. It is art, remember.
June 29th, 2004 at 3:05 am
thanks jasmin for sharing.
and yep artistic rules are learnt to be broken, too.
just wanna share a quote my brother just showed me from today's papers:
"it is one thing to take a technically flawless photo, but quite another to take one which communicates meaning and emotion."
--david chew, TODAY.
June 29th, 2004 at 5:11 am
Matto, that quote is "If your pictures aren`t good enough, you aren't close enough." It's from Robert Capa (see http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901020708-267730,00.html), one of the great war photographers, and it relates specifically to photojournalism, the idea being (IMO) that the closer you are to a subject, the more involved/in contact you are, the better your photos will be. For some kinds of photography, getting closer doesn't help at all, of course.
June 29th, 2004 at 5:16 am
Ooops, that link got messed up. Here it is again:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901020708-267730,00.html
June 29th, 2004 at 6:59 am
tripod? do they still make those?
my only "rule" is:
bring extra batteries
but thanks for the reminders jasmin!
June 29th, 2004 at 7:13 am
Of course artistic rules are meant to be broken.
But those tips came from one famous nature photographer who happened to be practical about what he did.
June 29th, 2004 at 7:19 am
Thanks Matt. I Googled it to try and attribute it properly but was searching for the wrong words.
Now that you say Capa I remember the context where I saw it recently: at the beginning of "War Photographer", the amazing documentary about another icon of combat journalism, James Nachtwey.
It's a good quote. Interaction is important.
June 29th, 2004 at 7:22 am
>> Check for background distractions.
That one took me a long time to learn. It was a while before I finally began to see telephone lines and signs, etc., that seemed to magically appear for the first time in my photos. That sort of learning takes real conscious effort, but once you learn it, your usuable ratio of photos goes right up.
Good list.
June 29th, 2004 at 7:29 am
Jasmin, thanks for posting these tips. I always find lists like this useful.
Whenever I see a list like this, I don't see it as a list of rules for me to follow. I see it as a list of ideas to think about. The real value for me is to understand why the photographer thought each rule should be in the list.
After you understand the "why", it makes it easier to know when to follow the rules and when to break them.
The reason for the rule is more important than the rule itself.
June 29th, 2004 at 8:07 am
You have to know the rules before you break them. You need to know how and what you did and why you did it.
when you think your close enough, get closer.
f8 and be there.
And backing up Joseph, clean up your background.
It is really hard to communicate "meaning and emotion" with an out of focus, busy, blown out, poorly exposed shot.
June 29th, 2004 at 9:43 am
"You have to know the rules before you break them."
There are no rules.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:01 am
""You have to know the rules before you break them."
There are no rules."
Both Ryan and matto are right, IMHO. There are long lists of guidlines, or "rules" to any creative medium.
You can chose to ignore them, not learn them, or intentionally go against them. But you will find that the quality of photography that you are making, even though it is a subjective field, will not be very good.
The rule of thirds, for instance, is called a "rule" because 9 times out of 10, it works to make the subject look more natural within the frame.
I think Ryan was accurate in saying that you have to understand the rule in order to effectively break it.
But in the end, it is all in the eye of the beholder. Some people think Bud Light is the best beer in the world. Some think it's Guinness. Really, there is little resemblence between the two.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:21 am
The learning process is where I think we'll ultimately find that digital photography has had its greatest impact, because it allows the photographer to experiment at extremely low cost and with a quicker feedback loop. Composition is only =one= of the ways in which the experimentation can be done.
(Now that I think about it, a perhaps greater impact is the loss of all those pet shots that used to finish rolls.)
June 29th, 2004 at 11:26 am
Guinness is clearly objectively superior to Bud Light. Let's don't get silly.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:31 am
brandon is quite obviously the only sane one around here.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:32 am
Guiness is the only one of the two that qualifies as a food group ;-P
June 29th, 2004 at 11:51 am
making photos is a lot like writing -- you write about what you know and like -- and when you do, you usually find other things you didn't know you liked
--- Make images! Make more and then more... and look at lots and lots of images -- peruse books - websites -- everything you can -- read comments about images -- what people like, or dislike about them -- what YOU like or dislike about them --
It's YOUR work -- if you love it -- that's really all that matters... just my humble opinion.
June 29th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
Boy am I in trouble:
Compositional Dos:
* Check for background distractions.
* Check for merging tonalities and objects accidentally sticking up into the frame.
http://www.pixpopuli.com/100000137a
* Simplify, simplify, simplify.
http://www.pixpopuli.com/100000023a
Compositional Don'ts
* Do not photograph the first subject you find; look for the best subject.
I don't even begin to know what this means. The first subject beginning when? The best relative to what? Why not photograph the 'first' subject AND the 'best' subject?
* Do not photograph contrasty subjects in bright sunlight.
http://www.pixpopuli.com/100000162a
* Do not bull's-eye your subject in the frame.
http://www.pixpopuli.com/100000234a
June 29th, 2004 at 1:10 pm
I know nothing about composition.. the rule of thirds? I did try making i little paper screen to fit over my lcd viewer, with lines drawn into thirds.. the lines were crooked.
by the time I would get the photo object all lined up.. it was gone. Same with checking that list ^ there. By the time I do all that my batteries are dead or the subject has up and died or left.. I did find this nifty link though. hehe.
nify link
June 29th, 2004 at 1:11 pm
Pooh.
http://www.picknowl.com.au/homepages/wdmunro/Page%2034.htm
June 29th, 2004 at 3:42 pm
Nantel,
What is the other?
June 29th, 2004 at 5:25 pm
When I say "there are no rules" what I really mean is "don't let other people tell you how to take *proper* photographs". By all means listen to the advice of those with years of experience and make your own rules if you want to.
The list at the top of this page sums up a bunch of conventional suggestions for effective technique. They are not "rules", they were not "made to be broken", and there should be no dogma or cliches about aprenticeship etc attached to them. They are merely conventional suggestions for efficient effective technique designed to produce "pleasing" results. Follow them at your own risk. Ignore them at your own risk. But whatever you do, don't stop taking the photos that you feel like taking.
June 29th, 2004 at 8:02 pm
It occurs to me, looking at a shot I just uploaded, that the sense behind the rule of thirds may be that if it's closer than a third in, it starts to feel uncomfortably dissonant. Would others agree with that when they look at --
http://www.samueljohnson.com/blog/parchives/040630.html ?
When I took this shot I wanted both the man on the bench and the stairway on the left, but that leaves the pillar (to me) uncomfortably close to center. Not quite like fingernails on a chalkboard, but a bit offputting none the less.
Under the rule of thirds that pillar would be far enough to the right that you wouldn't question the photographer's intent, I think.
June 29th, 2004 at 9:14 pm
sorry about the forget the rules comment, I meant no harm. I choose Guiness.
June 29th, 2004 at 10:06 pm
I choose Guinness too! Right now!
June 29th, 2004 at 10:29 pm
I detect thread creep. So, let's talk about THIS pic's composition, since I couldn't provoke any comments on "slightly off center" (this is not on my site, btw):
http://www.mylife2live.com/000044.html
June 29th, 2004 at 11:01 pm
Frank, that is a beautiful example.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:12 pm
Lane - -
A beautiful example of a pint? Or a beautiful example of how an off-kilter pillar can spoil an otherwise fine picture? Or how an otherwise fine picture can overwhelm a compositional mistake?
I hate to harangue -- I only mean to get towards specifity. In another thread on the blog, people are discussing the lack of concrete comments in their blogs. Since this is a more widely seen forum, I thought I'd probe... Don't mean to single you out as a bad citizen or anything.
June 30th, 2004 at 12:20 am
It's a beautiful example of creeping off topic, of a pint, of the rule of thirds.
I left it vague because:
1. I AM a horible citizen, no offense taken.
2. It just seemed like a funny photo to be thrown into this conversation, hitting all the tangents that have been brought up. That photo wasn't nearly as beautiful as your inclusion of it into this conversation.
June 30th, 2004 at 4:37 am
Do: Experiment.
Don't: Stop.
Composition is always an experimentation. Many times before the digital revolution I was thankfull that I pushed my self to "waste" film, the best stuff many times came at the end of the take. Digital cameras can help make the right choices but I don't let myself be fooled by the instant feedback. I push myself to make a compostion I'm pleased with.
June 30th, 2004 at 2:28 pm
apatrick wrote:
--> Do: Experiment.
--> Don't: Stop.
Now that's the wisest advice I've heard in a long time.
July 4th, 2004 at 4:28 pm
una cervesa frio por favor...corona con limo...muchos gracias....
Take lots of photos....see for yourself what works best...and best...what you like most...my rules of composition :-)))
July 6th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
"Do not photograph the first subject you find; look for the best subject."
I can't agree with this. It may be true with film for obvious reasons but I find that the more photos you take the better the odds are of having good ones. With digital I can afford to take 100 pictures and delete 99 of them. Normally I delete about 80 percent of the photos I take simply because I take so many of them. Take alot of photos and use alot of different settings. That would be a better rule IMHO..
July 7th, 2004 at 5:39 pm
may i recommend the lomo rules. though they specifically reference lomos and film, i think they can be interpreted to apply to any camera as a sort of manifesto for the photoblogger. wouldn't you agree?
1. take your camera everywhere you go
2. use it anytime-- day and night
3. lomography is not an interference in your life but part of it
4. try the shot from the hip
5. approach the objects of oyur lomographic desire as close as possible
6. don't think
7. be fast
8. you don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film
9. afterwards either
10. don't worry about the rules
for more info about the crazy lomo thinking, go to : http://www.lomography.com/about/
July 8th, 2004 at 3:43 am
1. not every picture needs to be a close-up/macro
2. photos of signs are really pictures of someone else's creative work.
3. yeah, you photographed your feet standing somewhere, big deal.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:38 am
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