No ball or skipping rope required.
When I say Graphic Design is a game photographers can play I mean it is an exercise people can use to sharpen their sense of composition. But it didn’t start that way. It started as a way to play with basic shapes found every day in all manner of subjects. First you find the shapes and then you see how it can be composed in the most satisfying way in your photo area.
This photo shows how an arrangement of three things can imply a triangle in your composition. When you see it as a triangle it gives you a better sense of the distribution of visual mass in an image.
Let’s start by looking at some basic shapes.
Your standard enclosed shapes: squares, rectangles, circles, eclipses, triangles. You’ll find them everywhere as you walk about.
Buildings are full of rectangles and squares. Strong and steady. Square corners.
The sun and moon look like circles in the sky. Ponds are often round-ish, or elliptical. Dinner plates are usually circular. As you look at circles from an angle they become eclipses. We often simplify flowers to circles in a quick sketch.
Triangles are everywhere, too, but it takes more looking. Often we see triangles in the arrangements of three things, like flowers, as in my first photo. The wide side of a triangle has the most stable base. An upsidedown triangle, standing on its point won’t say up, without support. Which tells you something about using a triangle in composing a picture.
Then there’s straight lines.
Horizontal lines are stable, solid, restful. The horizon. A fallen tree can fall no further than flat on the ground, finally at rest. If you fell asleep on your feet how would you end up?
Vertical lines imply some sort of tension. Some force is required to hold them up or they would fall down and join the horizontal lines in their lying about. Vertical lines represent strength and dignity, an upright bearing.
Oblique lines are dynamic. They imply action and speed. The fastest way from the bottom of your image to the top is by an oblique line - zip, there you are.
Now for some curved lines.
Fairly horizontal curved lines are like the undulating landscape, pretty stable. Elegant, more artistic than a straight line.
Curved lines are slower than oblique lines, but more graceful, too. You often see this type of curve in plant stems. Meandering curves, or “S” curves are the slowest lines. When your photo is based on a meandering line you invite the viewer to explore your image slowly, enjoying the relaxed path through the image.
How to play the game: you look about to see what sort of basic shapes you can find. The subject matter doesn’t matter a bit. It is only the shapes we are interested in. Can’t find a plain shape? Take out a dinner plate and place it on the empty table. Just a circle in a wide open space. Now explore the ways you can look at that simple shape, different angles, different placements within the frame. Try a few photos of your shape and see if you can make a pleasing minimalist composition out of it. Consider the feeling of balance in the image, or dynamic tension.
Once you have explored composing a single simple shape try adding a secondary shape. Maybe another circle, but smaller, or a triangle. Two objects changes everything and you can make all sorts of compositions with two objects, shifting the importance of one over the other, changing the balance, etc.
Look through your existing photos for instances where you photographed a simple shape or made a composition based of a simple line or shape. Post a few. Or make a few simple compositions of things like a single plate on your table.
I’m sure you will find, as others have in the past, that when you play the Graphic Design game now and then you begin to see those shapes everywhere, in your landscape images, in pictures of flowers, in abstracts, everywhere. And while you might not find the Graphic Design pictures very exciting beyond finding the shapes and seeing how you can compose them nicely, that you will begin to make more conscious use of things like leading lines in landscapes or shapes in nature close-ups. It sharpens your seeing and does wonders for your sense of composition.
The very core of composition is your ability to abstract - or to be able to see the essential simple shapes that make up your subject. Often a scene can seem complex until you begin to see the simple shapes at the heart of it. As soon as you begin to use the simple shapes and leading lines in a scene you will find everything makes sense and the way to compose it becomes clear.
When I say Graphic Design is a game photographers can play I mean it is an exercise people can use to sharpen their sense of composition. But it didn’t start that way. It started as a way to play with basic shapes found every day in all manner of subjects. First you find the shapes and then you see how it can be composed in the most satisfying way in your photo area.
This photo shows how an arrangement of three things can imply a triangle in your composition. When you see it as a triangle it gives you a better sense of the distribution of visual mass in an image.
Let’s start by looking at some basic shapes.
Your standard enclosed shapes: squares, rectangles, circles, eclipses, triangles. You’ll find them everywhere as you walk about.
Buildings are full of rectangles and squares. Strong and steady. Square corners.
The sun and moon look like circles in the sky. Ponds are often round-ish, or elliptical. Dinner plates are usually circular. As you look at circles from an angle they become eclipses. We often simplify flowers to circles in a quick sketch.
Triangles are everywhere, too, but it takes more looking. Often we see triangles in the arrangements of three things, like flowers, as in my first photo. The wide side of a triangle has the most stable base. An upsidedown triangle, standing on its point won’t say up, without support. Which tells you something about using a triangle in composing a picture.
Then there’s straight lines.
Horizontal lines are stable, solid, restful. The horizon. A fallen tree can fall no further than flat on the ground, finally at rest. If you fell asleep on your feet how would you end up?
Vertical lines imply some sort of tension. Some force is required to hold them up or they would fall down and join the horizontal lines in their lying about. Vertical lines represent strength and dignity, an upright bearing.
Oblique lines are dynamic. They imply action and speed. The fastest way from the bottom of your image to the top is by an oblique line - zip, there you are.
Now for some curved lines.
Fairly horizontal curved lines are like the undulating landscape, pretty stable. Elegant, more artistic than a straight line.
Curved lines are slower than oblique lines, but more graceful, too. You often see this type of curve in plant stems. Meandering curves, or “S” curves are the slowest lines. When your photo is based on a meandering line you invite the viewer to explore your image slowly, enjoying the relaxed path through the image.
How to play the game: you look about to see what sort of basic shapes you can find. The subject matter doesn’t matter a bit. It is only the shapes we are interested in. Can’t find a plain shape? Take out a dinner plate and place it on the empty table. Just a circle in a wide open space. Now explore the ways you can look at that simple shape, different angles, different placements within the frame. Try a few photos of your shape and see if you can make a pleasing minimalist composition out of it. Consider the feeling of balance in the image, or dynamic tension.
Once you have explored composing a single simple shape try adding a secondary shape. Maybe another circle, but smaller, or a triangle. Two objects changes everything and you can make all sorts of compositions with two objects, shifting the importance of one over the other, changing the balance, etc.
Look through your existing photos for instances where you photographed a simple shape or made a composition based of a simple line or shape. Post a few. Or make a few simple compositions of things like a single plate on your table.
I’m sure you will find, as others have in the past, that when you play the Graphic Design game now and then you begin to see those shapes everywhere, in your landscape images, in pictures of flowers, in abstracts, everywhere. And while you might not find the Graphic Design pictures very exciting beyond finding the shapes and seeing how you can compose them nicely, that you will begin to make more conscious use of things like leading lines in landscapes or shapes in nature close-ups. It sharpens your seeing and does wonders for your sense of composition.
The very core of composition is your ability to abstract - or to be able to see the essential simple shapes that make up your subject. Often a scene can seem complex until you begin to see the simple shapes at the heart of it. As soon as you begin to use the simple shapes and leading lines in a scene you will find everything makes sense and the way to compose it becomes clear.