Photographer Denis Cherim of Madrid, Spain, says that writing is not one of his strengths. Instead, he chooses to tell stories with pictures instead of words. He has a knack for spotting moments in which the subjects and shadows of his scenes line up in special ways.
There are only a few people alive as qualified to give photography and composition advice as Huntington Witherill. A former "artist of the year," he studied under the great Ansel Adams and in this video he describes his approach to composing eye-catching images.
Portrait photographer James Allen Stewart wants to show you how to break the old rules of composition... with some new rules. In a recent video, he introduces two of his own rules that have helped him compose more interesting, dynamic images.
Here's a neat way to take your photos of wedding rings to the next level: include the couple in the reflections.
Renowned travel photographer Bob Holmes says he shoots in a "National Geographic style." A style that he describes as not about the photographer, but about the subject; a style that is graphic, and features a strong use of color. And in this video, he shares some composition tips that will help you capture some of that iconic style in your photos as well.
This is a set of notes on composition, loosely based on ideas of composition from the Victorian era. There's quite a bit more, and yet quite a bit less, to the Victorian ideas.
Mastering composition is the best way to get more keepers in your street photography. That makes sense, right? If you know how to make a visually pleasing image, then you can discipline yourself to capture the remarkable photos that tell a story.
My name is Tavis Leaf Glover, and I’m an artist just like you, trying to create art that I can be proud of and share with the world. Though, something really hindered me in the beginning... the Rule of Thirds.
I want to shed some light on the Rule of Thirds Myths we’ve all been forcefully spoon fed during our creative infancy, which continues to linger as our compositions mature.
Photographer Joel Goodman was photographing revelers in Manchester on New Year's Eve when he came across a strange scene: police were wrestling a man on the ground while another man was reclining on the street and reaching for his beer.
Goodman's resulting photo has gone wildly viral online, and many are referring to it as a "perfect composition" and a photo that's reminiscent of a Renaissance masterpiece painting.
Composition can make or break a photograph. This is why it's important to understand it and know how to effectively and creatively use it. In essence, composition describes the position of relative elements in a photograph. A strong composition will tend to have leading lines that draw attention to your subject: these can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines depending on the placement of your subject in the frame.
Here's an inspiring 5-minute video in which renowned street photographer Joel Meyerowitz talks about his approach and mindset to making photos.
Early on in my street photography career, I went on YouTube and searched for some inspiration on other street photographers. I came across the work and approach of Bruce Gilden, who absolutely blew me away. He would photograph people at very close proximities (about an arm's-length away), while shooting with a flash on a 28mm lens.
Yesterday we shared some interesting before-and-after images showing the visual effects work that went into the hit …
In my mind, there are three important elements of a photograph. Lighting, Composition and Moment. Every picture that I love has these elements, in varying amounts. A great picture may have strength in all three areas, or it may be, for example, such an emotional moment that it overpowers poor composition or light.
But for this article I want to take a quick look at composition, and how photographers will be subconsciously considering many compositional elements when making pictures as well as editing and post processing later.
Beautiful photo compositions generally require a keen eye and a quick shutter finger, but sometimes luck plays a huge role as well. That's what happened today for UK-based photographer Amy Shore, who was photographing the total solar eclipse from her backyard in Leicestershire. A bird flew into Shore's frame as the Moon was passing over the face of the Sun, adding a unique touch to her shot.
Photography is an analytic art form. We aim our lenses to specific parts of the world around us to pick a frame because, in our analysis, that particular frame presents the photograph we wish to take. We can certainly raise the camera, lower the camera, rotate it, pitch it, yaw it, aim at a different part and end up photographing something different.
You should realize that there are infinite number of photographs you can take from where you are now. How then do we aim the camera to “that particular frame” to photograph?
Here's a great video on photographic composition, created by The Cooperative of Photography using tips and photographs by legendary photojournalist Steve McCurry. Each of the 9 composition tips is illustrated with examples from McCurry's impressive body of work.
Here's a neat idea you can try next time the seasons change. All it took to create the image above was a couple of months of dedication, a smartphone, and a bit of work in Photoshop. No special gear, and not that much in way of effort, but a pretty cool (if a bit over-saturated) final product.
In a similar vein as the comprehensive composition video we shared with you yesterday, this 2012 lecture by photographer Adam Marelli uses classical art to show how we as photographers face the exact same challenges in lighting and composition today as they did centuries ago.
The basic rules of composition apply to almost every visual art there is, be it photography, painting or graphic design. Whether it’s the rule of thirds or the rule of triangles, the principles overlap, leaving the educational resources for each respective art form useful across the board, not tied down to one specific field.
There are a lot of debates in the world of photography: Nikon Vs. Canon, DSLR Vs. Mirrorless and Full-Frame Vs. Everything Else just to name a few. But one of the battles that doesn't get as much air time probably has more impact on your images than any of the previous three. We're talking about The Rule of Thirds Vs. The Golden Ratio.
Two months ago we featured the work of Fan Ho, a Chinese photographer who spent much of his life documenting the streets of Hong Kong. His photographs were, to put it lightly, a hit with everybody who saw them. Strong composition and an incredible understanding of light (if you'll allow the pun) shone through in every frame.
Today, we get to go a little bit deeper thanks to the show The Art of Photography, who recently took a closer look at Fan Ho’s work, taking the time to point out what it is that sets his images apart from the many others out there.
Now that practically every phone on the market has a camera, it’s easy for anyone to become a ‘photographer.’ What isn’t nearly as easy is consistently capturing quality images using those phones, especially if you don’t have any background in photography.
But a new app called Camera51 aims to solve these woes by becoming a little composition instructor on-the-go.
What happens when you give a graphic designer a camera? Well, in the case of Lino Russo and his latest project Skymetric, you get a eye-catching series of images that explore the relationship between nature and architecture in the most colorful way imaginable.
Richard Silver is a name that's popped up before here on PetaPixel. Just over a year ago we shared his ‘time-slice’ photo collages that blended together day and night in the Big Apple. Today, we share his next, more international project.
Erik Kim is one of the best-known street photographers out there, today. In his continues efforts to shoot and share, Kim has put out the full presentation he used in his Introduction to Composition for Street Photography talk at Gulf Photo Plus 2014.
Post-processing and lighting and camera tutorials are all good and well, but none of them are going to do anything for you if you don't have a good handle on composition. To that end, this basic two-part composition tutorial by Mike Browne will give you a solid foundation from which to start.
No matter how many hours you spend in Photoshop each day, it’s inevitable there’s a feature or utility within the app you’re yet to use or are completely unaware of. Such was the case for this neat little tip by Digitalchemy that we just stumbled upon, which shows you how to import a collection of photographs into Photoshop, each as a new layer in the same file.
We all know how much time and effort is put into photo compositions, but the process by which the above image was created is even more mind-blowing when it's compiled into the GIF you see below.
Composition and the rules that accompany it are some of the most basic aspects you learn when first picking up a camera. If you've been a photographer long, it's probably safe to say that the "rule of thirds" and "golden mean" are ingrained into your brain so well that it's second-nature now.
That being said, every once in a while it's nice to take a fresh look at the rules and the underlying concepts behind them -- if for no other reason than because you have to know the rules in order to break them properly.