Adding Impact Using Shapes

     Landscape pictures are always popular, and there's a lot to be said for a set of rolling green hills and some brightly colored skies. The problem is, with nothing but free-flowing curves, any image can be boring. The easiest way to convey a sense of order to otherwise chaotic scenes.
     I won't post too many pictures this time unless someone asks for them, but I will give you some advice on the use of different shapes.
Traingles- Triangles are a great way to lead somebody's eyes into your picture. Put your subject on one point of the triangle, and arrange other points of interest on the other points. One of my favorite ways to use this trick is to take a picture in a tree flanked road or driveway, with a house or a person at the point where the perspective liens come together.
Squares and rectangles- These shapes are great for producing a sense of order in a scene. Regular patterns of quadrilaterals (such as in a railroad track or brick wall) will have the effect of contributing a rigid structure to the scene. Because of this, scattered and widely spaced squares can give a sense of rebellious freedom.
    I may edit this later with more shapes and explanations when I think of them.

Learning how to leave Automatic Behind

      So you've got a camera; that's great. But what's that? You've left it in green box mode! Oh no, that will never do. No self respecting shutterbug would use the green box mode. You see, the green box means automatic, which means that you're letting the camera decide how it wants to take the picture. But the camera doesn't know whether you're  shooting a waterfall or a wedding or just naked pictures of yourself to put on craigslist. Do you really trust that tiny onboard computer to take a good picture?
      Of course not. Now, if you've got any sort of respectable camera, you've got a few different modes to choose from. While the names may change from brand to brand, the options you should have are an aperture mode, a shutter mode, and a manual mode. In aperture and shutter mode, you control one aspect of the image and allow the camera to decide the rest. In manual, you control everything. But that hardly tells you anything at all, does it? Well, allow me to explain.
         Taking a picture is a lot like using a sink. You can choose how long to run the tap(shutter speed), how much water comes out at once(aperture). But how do we use these things to fill our picture-cup?
         Let's start with shutter mode. Inside every camera is a sensor. There's also a little plate called a shutter, which opens and closes to let in light. By setting the shutter speed, you control how long the camera lets light in. As you raise the shutter speed your pictures will get sharper and sharper, but will also become darker. If you slow the shutter speed down, your pictures will be blurrier and brighter. I won't tell you what shutter speeds to use, but I will say this; if you take a picture with a shutter speed longer than 1/60 of a second, use a tripod. The human hand can't hold still for more that long.
         Aperture doesn't just control how much light pours into the camera; it controls depth as well. Now there's one thing you should know about how we talk about aperture. Low is high, and high is low. An aperture of 2.8 is high, and an aperture of 16 is considered low. Now that we've cleared that up, let's look at how aperture affects depth. High apertures let in a great big rush of light all at once. Because of this, what you've focused on will be sharp, but everything else will be blurry, because rather the camera threw all that information at the sensor at once. Lower apertures let in a little light at a time, and the camera can process the sights much more clearly. A low aperture is great for landscapes because it keeps a huge area in focus. The amount of stuff that your camera keeps in focus is called the depth of field.

      One last light-related setting on your camera is the ISO, or light sensitivity. If the camera's light sensitivity is low, you will take sharper pictures, but you'll be limited to shooting in brighter environments. The higher you set the ISO, the grainier your image will become, but you can take pictures in darker places. You might wonder why you wouldn't just use your camera's flash and always shoot with a low ISO. Well, on camera flashes are, in a word, crap. They give out harsh light with big blotchy shadows, and generally make things look miserable unless you've got a little more know-how.

I went to my kitchen to get a muffin, and figured that on my way I could show you what I meant. All these pictures were taken with the same ISO.

An automatic picture Note the harsh light and the glare on the wrapper.

A picture taken in shutter mode. Shutter priority pictures in dimly lit places will be dark unless you've cranked up the ISO.

Taken with a higher aperture. Notice the light is smoother, since we're only using the ambient.

Basic Composition; The Rule Of Thirds

 This is by far the quickest way to noticeably improve the quality of any pictures you take, and it's as easy as playing tic tac toe.

  

 Whenever you take pictures from now in, try and imagine this grid going across your viewfinder. 

Many cameras even have an option to display this grid in the viewfinder, but I prefer to visualize it. First, let me show you how not to use the grid.  

 Putting your subject in the middle of the frame like this is boring. It's the sort of picture that thousands of tourists have taken all over the world, with an exotic background directly behind their smiling faces. It's how a kid with his first camera takes pictures, and it's a habit that most people never grow out of. There's nothing wrong with that so long as all you need is to take a quick picture to prove that you've been somewhere or seen something, but for a professional photographer, these pictures are common, boring, and unimaginative. 

Here's an example of how you should be using the grid.

Your subject is now pushed off into one third of the picture. In this case, the left third. Since we're just using Mr. Awesomeface here, the rest of the frame seems rather empty, but generally, putting your subject off to one side like this will make for a more striking image. The subject is off to one side, looking back- is he leaving a group of friends back there? If he were in the bottom third, maybe he's looking up at something above him, which would then draw the viewer's eye up to that subject. Who knows? the possibilities are endless! Keep in mind that the rule of thirds works both horizontally and vertically. 

By putting Mr Awesomeface here in the bottom corner of the frame, the attention is drawn up to the secondary subject, in this case the sun in the center. If Mr Awesomeface was centered, the mountains would be in the top third. While this would be interesting, it would leave some dead space beneath our model here, and we'd get the bottom half of the sun, just nudging into the picture as an afterthought. So there you have it.If you've got any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section. Now get out there and take some pictures!

Welcome to the site!

This blog is dedicated to the fine art of photography. These days, with the ever decreasing price of digital cameras and social networking sites like Facebook, people everywhere are recording their lives and sharing them online. Vacations, birthdays, and trips with friends alike are plastered up for all to see. And what do you see? Blurry, grainy, pictures. Pictures that are either blown out or so dark that you can't tell the subject from the background. In short; you see crap. Well my friends, you are now a part of the solution. If you have a D-SLR camera, or even a higher end point and shoot like the newer Nikon Coolpixes, this site will furnish you with an arsenal of tricks and tips to make your photographs look like they were taken by the pros!