Balancing Framing.

Framing is the last major rule I'll be talking about. When you think framing you probably think of an object which surrounds a photo. In photography it's a very similar concept, except the object is surrounding the subject.

Yes, the parachute can be a subject, and yes the lines of the parachute can

lead out towards the outer ring of the parachute. Does one of the lines lead

to a paratrooper? Sure, but I argue in this photo he's not the center of

interest, the parachute is, and the frame is the sky.

In the photo above an object [the parachute] is surrounding a subject [the paratrooper], this is essentially framing.

   But what if I told you our subject was the parachute and the frame was the sky?

 [Insert the Keanu Reeves "Whoa" here]

Here I've cropped and rotated our original photo to have the soldier in a

center of interest.

   I personally like that idea better. The paratrooper is now an after thought. The real question here is, which of the following did you think first? "Wow nice parachute, oh and look at the soldier!" or "Look at that soldier, wow he's surrounded by a parachute!"

   Is he still framed? Sure, but in my opinion if you accept the sky is the frame and the parachute is the subject, this photo works at lot better in my opinion as an example of framing. Also, as is customary, it ties in with last weeks rule of balance

You can see the Subject is clearly in at least one point of interest. We also

have leading lines. But for me, this not only cheating, but it's also just not

as good as the original. Let me emphasize, "for me," because it's all subjective.

   But what if we wanted the paratrooper as our subject? How could we make that our primary focus?

   Well, lets try it out, on our left is a crop. To me, this is a bad crop. Why? Because I've completely changed my center of interest. Practice how you play. If you stop worrying about what you're seeing the view finder because,

"Oh, I'll just crop it later,"

you're already on the bad habit path. Having bad habits very rarely leads to having good results.

   Back to the photo. Our subject is, in my opinion, clearly the paratrooper. But he's a little dark. And as we've already discussed, light is what draws our eyes.


   So lets look at the basics. Is our subject in a point of interest? Yes. Is he/she in Two points? No, but at least we got one. Rule of Thirds, Check. Do we have framing? Sure, the parachute frames our paratrooper well. Do we leading lines to our subject? Sure.

Ultimate question, is this CROP better than our PHOTO? I don't know. It's all subjective after all. If you where to ask me, no simply because I know it's a crop. But I honestly really like the balance of the original. Also, in the crop I really dislike that our soldier still isn't really that clear.

Balancing Act: Light v. Dark

There I was walking on a side walk and I saw this shadow. Instead of just taking any old photo I too the time to compose it. Is this going to win me an award? No. But it's certainly better than had I not taken any time to compose it. 

   It's Sunday, that means this weeks theme, balance is officially over. We talked about asymmetrical balance, finding balance, twisting balance, and almost balance.

   I found the photo above while walking along a sidewalk. I pulled out my cell phone and took the shot. It's not super fancy, it is after all just grass. But I took my time and composed it. It is, in my opinion, and pretty good photo considering it's not a particularly amazing subject. You can't always shoot pictures of things most people will never see at unique perspectives.

   I'm sure you've found yourself walking around and your eye caught something really amazing. So you pulled out your phone and pressed the button. Later you looked at it, found it unimpressive and thought, "Ugh, I'm not a good photographer," or "If only I had a really good camera."

Shadows of the grass are in my points of interest. check. This is about 50%

light 50% shade, so that's pretty well balanced. It's full of lines, I don't know

if I would consider them leading lines per say.

   Maybe the problem was that you just didn't think about what exactly you wanted to take a photo of.  Your subject, after all, is the most important consideration. With your subject in mind pick a rule and compose your photo.

Asymmetrical balance is still in fact balance, but I feel we lost our true

subject, the blades of grass, not just the shadow itself.

   So, lets take a look at this shot. what's my subject?

It's not just the shadow, it's the single blades of grass.

   It was important for me to make sure I didn't have just a big blob of shadow filling up my frame, I needed those single blades to stand out. You'll notice in the shot on the right, which was a quick crop, that my shot just isn't the same. I have shadow in my points of interest, but it's not as balanced. And in my opinion my true subject, the blades of grass, are lost.

Yes, this is just a shadow, but regardless of what you're taking a photo of, it's not excuse to not use composition.

Balance, with a twist.

April Dudash, reporter with the Fayetteville Observer, interviews a paratrooper on Sicily Drop Zone during Operation Toy Drop, hosted by the U.S. Army Civil Affairs & Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg on December 11, 2011. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Felix R. Fimbres)

Almost, but not quite. I almost called this a great photograph. But it's missing just a couple elements. The sky was slightly overcast, that helped prevent harsh shadows, but a touch of flash or some reflector action would have been great. That's called fill light, adding light to fill in the shadows. It would have lit up our subjects a little more and allowed the sky to pop more, getting a more detail out of those wonderfully wispy clouds in the back. As it stands I fixed it up a little in post [Photoshop] by adding fill light digitally instead of with a flash or a reflector. I have a few friends who are Photoshop masters, but really that just adds more time playing with your photos.

If you want to spend a lot of time on one photograph in Photoshop by all means go ahead; but I like to shot and share more than I like to shot, edit, edit, edit some more, share.

Two subjects, very close to all four points of interest, that's simple balance.

Good. A couple leading lines? Also good. A distracting guy in the background? 

Bad. The reporter is a little dark, flash/reflector light would have been great.

   What else is wrong with this photograph? Well there's a paratrooper on the left hand side and he's chopped in half. I don't know personally if I would have rather had him all the way in or all the way out. I think either/or would have made me feel much better about this shot. But half way, that's just not cutting it for me. I went ahead and removed the distraction in the photo at the end of this post.

   So what went right with this photo? Well you can see I have two subjects in and very close to those 4 points of interest, unlike this photo. The subjects are balanced.

This is the easiest way to get balance, find two subjects, give them each two points. Done.

 

Same photo, without the dutch angle. You'll notice I lost the paratrooper

in the background as well. Maybe you like this better. Maybe you don't, this

only serves to highlight photography outside of the basic rules is subjective.

   If you've been following along, you'll notice I added a little of that Dutch angle I talked about here in fourth paragraph. The reporter is tiny, obviously since the paratrooper is kneeling and almost eye level with her. Adding the twist allows them to see eye to eye if you will. I wanted their eyes to be level with each other. So I twisted it.

   I also have a leading line from the paratrooper to the reporter, and another leading from the reporter down to her notes and maybe back to the paratrooper's hand, which kind of has lines to the his bag. Which kind of leads up to his leg and up his body back to his eyes.

   Okay, okay, all those lines are a stretch. But we at least have the two that are pointed out in the photo above.

    Below is a cropped photo which removes that guy in the background. For me, it's less distracting. Is this cheating? By my own personal rules, sure. But to me it's such a slight crop that it's okay. Like I said previously, I don't look down on any photographer who wants to edit his photograph until is perfect to him/her, it's just not my style. I like to edit as little as possible to keep things as real as possible. It is our imperfections which make us beautiful.