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Photography composition basics

We’ve had a lot of requests from you guys, to tell you more about composition. Composition is all about lining up the elements of your image within the camera’s viewfinder, so that they line up in a pleasing interesting dynamic sort of a way. I’m sure most of you have heard of devices such as the rule of thirds, or the rule of diagonals and others to help you with your composition, but I also know that there’s a lot of confusion around, well, how do you line up immovable objects within a picture.

 

I’m sitting here right now with a load of beach huts behind me; they’re pretty immovable, aren’t they? I have an annoying sort of little extra head growing out of my neck, which is that tree over there, another very immovable object. Now, the obvious thing that most people would do is say ‘Mike, just move a bit, there’s an extra head growing out of your neck’.

 

Well, there’s a much much easier way. If you were shooting a candid picture, with somebody gazing off into the distance, you don’t want to alert them to something and you also don’t want the thing growing out of their neck. So all you have to do is move yourself just a little bit. So now that annoying tree has moved across the frame so it’s now over here, as opposed to growing out of my neck. Also the beach huts have realigned themselves very slightly, it’s a little more pleasing because there’s a bit more separation between me and them.

 

Another way you could lose the tree, if we just pop it back again for a moment, would be to lower the camera. Now before we do it, the movement that Jayne just did with the video camera wasn’t a turning, a twisting movement like that, it was a physical sideways movement of both herself and the camera, and that is what made those elements move further apart. This is what created a gap between my neck and the tree.

 

The next one could be to lower down, to get lower so that the tree will disappear behind me. Also the beach huts have pretty much disappeared as well and now it’s me against the sky, but we’ve now got some foreground stuff going on in this shot in the shape, these little wooden posts. That movement was slightly more complex. As opposed to being a straightforward sideways or up and down, Jayne moved the camera down like this, as she should have crouched down to take the picture. I’m going to take one of her so you can see where she is in relation to me. There we go. She also had to lower the camera but tilt it upwards as she did it, so there’s this kind of motion going on.

 

You could also move things like the horizon. Now, that is a very very very static and solid thing to have in a picture. So if you come around this way a little bit Jayne, and as Jayne is keeping the camera on me and moving, you can see we’ve also recomposed the picture. I haven’t moved an inch, but now there’s no beach hut. It’s just a little bit of a movement. It’s about what? Eight feet? Now I’ve got the horizon behind me. Now, the horizon is obviously very immovable indeed, but you can move it around within your picture. By moving that up-and-down motion again you can move that horizon up and down in the picture. All Jayne’s doing is raising and lowering herself off by, I don’t know, a couple of feet by bending at the knees and that’s having the effect of moving the horizon around within the picture. It really is as simple as that.

 

So, more about the tilting kind of emotion. So, am I framed full frame? Here we go. Full frame shot of me. So now I have a gap at the bottom, which is the shingle, and a gap above my head, which is the sky. Now, this tilting movement in that plane is all about altering these gaps above and below and either side.

 

- Where am I in the viewfinder, Jayne? Am I in the middle?

- Pretty much in the middle.

 

Okay. So by doing a tilt like this, Jayne can move me to one side or the other. So just by making a slight tilt, one way or the other, I’m moving from side to side in your picture. Note this is that kind of movement. This isn’t a physical side to side, this is a twisty sort of a movement with the camera. If she wants to alter the gap above or below me, then that’s an up and down sort of movement like this. So right now I’ve got a little tiny bit of shingle below my feet and a fair bit of sky, but by tilting the camera down, only a tiny bit, only a couple degrees, it reversed those gaps. I’ve now got a much smaller gap at the top and much more below.

 

You have to train yourself to look all around your viewfinder. Scan it with your eye. Imagine the edge of your viewfinder is a picture frame. Look all around. Look at those gaps and you need to make minute little tweaks and adjustments to the tilt and the side to side and the up and down planes of your camera to adjust those elements.

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