HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Feb. 6, 2006 There are two basic principles of photography which you should apply to all your photographs: 1) Emphasize the important. 2) Eliminate the unimportant. In order to accomplish these tasks, take advantage of the elements in photography that you can manipulate. 1. Point of view. More in or zoom in to fill the frame with the important details and to crowd out the unimportant. More right, left, up, down, all around to find the angle which gives the least distracting background and the best angle on the subject. 2. Choose a camera which lets YOU control some of the elements. If your camera is ONLY fully automatic, you are greatly limited. For example, if you wish to focus on your subject and keep the background and/or foreground blurry, you need to use a wide aperture. If you need a slow shutter speed so you can pan with a moving object and make the background blur, you must be able to set your shutter speed rather than have the camera do it for you. 3. A zoom or an interchangeable lens camera allows you to use wide angle to keep much of the elements in focus, if that’s what you want, or use a telephoto setting to focus solely on the main element while tending to blur what is in front and behind the subject. 4. Choose or modify your lighting. When photographing a swimsuit model I once pulled the gold foil sunshade out of my car window and had an assistant hold the reflector so it brought some light into the shadows of the model’s face. Our eyes can see a contrast ration of 1:15 quite well, digital cameras can do fairly well at 1:5 or 1:7, but camera film may hold detail in a range of 1:3 only. Putting a little light into the shadow areas made a big difference in the photos, and the gold tint of the light created more of a sunset effect. The young lady used the photos to apply for modeling jobs, and she was picked to be in a major rock band’s MTV music video. 5. Composition is a difficult subject to teach in a few lines and without examples to point out, but here are a few ideas. First, put the main point of interest approximately 1/3 of the way in from a corner. Draw a tic-tac-toe diagram in your mind and put the subject on one of the intersections. Look for interesting lines which can lead the eye into the picture and to the main subject: the curve of a path or highway or river, for example. Consider that diagonal lines are generally more dynamic and interesting than pure horizontal or vertical. Think of the usual landscape as having a foreground, where you can show an interesting object such as rocks or plants, a middle ground where some usual scenery exists, and a distant background which might be hills, mountains, or other. I hope these quick tips have been helpful and whetted your appetite to make your next photographs better. 
------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
