Pics Can Talk

Gone are the days where you hurriedly take pictures of friends and unintentionally chop off their heads and only realizing it after you get your pictures back from the lab. Either we all have become better photographers in this modern day and age or perhaps it is due to the wonders of digital photography, where all it takes is a press of the little magical “Delete” button and all your photography woes come to an end. In any case, somewhere along the way, we realise that our photo album has become the all too familiar boring set of normal “straight on”, “flat”, “uninspiring” images. Now think, Composition.

Composition is the way in which a photographer conveys the story and meaning of the photograph. It is really a diverse subject to dwell into, but you may realise that it will be brought up very frequently in relation to other subjects of photography.

Here we briefly explain the basic principle of composition, which will help towards you composing a pleasing picture. After which, hopefully you’ll be using less of the “Delete” button.

The Rule of Thirds

The “Rule of Thirds” is one of the very basic guideline in composition. Many have preached it as a hard and steadfast rule of photography, and it has been proven to work.

Visualise 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines splitting your picture into 9 segments, when you are taking a shot. If you are taking a picture of landscape, compose your picture so that the horizon falls on either one of the horizontal lines. That means the sky perhaps taking one third of the top of your picture and the ground, two thirds. Or when you are taking a picture of a person standing in front of a nice background, compose your subject so he or she is standing along one of the vertical lines.

In the subject of landscape above, this sort of composition ensures a pleasing image with no two elements, ie the sky and ground, fighting for attention. You either give focus to a dramatic sky or a feature full foreground. And in the matter of taking the shot of a person, your picture would not look flat, by just placing your subject right in the middle of the picture. It provides you with a little more diversity to work with.

A point to note is that, most rules were meant to be broken. Although, perhaps nine out of ten times you get a good picture with this rule, don’t let that stop you from creating some dynamic shots by composing creatively. After all, what governs the picture is really the subject itself, which may be interpreted in different compositions.

Horizontal or Vertical?

Horizontal format is widely used for landscape photography for the simple reason of getting a panoramic and sweeping view of the entire scenery. It is somewhat a pleasing composition where you can see everything in relation to the object next to it. A vertical format is usually used for strong emphasis on a particular subject. It is a more dynamic format where you would use a strong foreground image to lead your eye into the picture.

Horizontal or vertical format may not really be just the way your subject is positioned. Just because you are taking a full body shot of a person, doesn’t mean you have to take a vertical shot. A horizontal shot coupling your subject with an interesting background may work just as well if you position your subject well. Of course, in the end if you are unsure, take both and make your choice from the final outcome.

Perspective

Still photography is basically taking a three dimensional surrounding and putting it into a two dimensional form, which is your picture. One way to give your picture depth is to use perspective. Although the end result is still a two dimensional picture, but your brain converts that into 3D.

Converging lines such as roads, a line of trees, sides of buildings, lampposts sets a path which will lead your viewers’ eyes into the picture. As such, it does not only create depth but also a sense of motion.

Use the wideangle setting on your camera to the best effect when taking a strong perspective picture. Always be aware of your foreground which is an important starting point as you lead into the main subject of your picture.

When composing your picture, it is important to remember the basic principles of composition. But, to adhere to the rules really depends on you. With practice, composing a picture should come so natural that, it will be like almost driving a car, where you don’t really have to think about it, but just drive.

So, having fiddled with your new toy, by now you would have taken that photo of your girlfriend or boyfriend posing with their hands placed on their hips, your little baby’s smile, a friend huffing and puffing to blow out a candle on a cake, you would also have probably asked a bunch of people say “cheese” many times over to get them to give you a genuine smile on your photo and pulled your camera out a couple of times for the occasional fun snapshot of a “teh tarik” session. Perhaps now it’s earning a well-deserved spot on the shelf among the rest of your decorative items.

Is that all there is to it? Okay, let’s look at your approach to photography. You may have bought that little snapshot digital camera to take all the special occasion mentioned above. Of course you couldn’t be bothered to go through the pages and pages of manual describing the little features and tweaks on your camera. The most common setting your camera would be on is “Full Auto”. Kudos to you I say, as I believe most of your photos will turn out fine.

Now, add a little creative shot here and there, and it would make your photo album much more interesting, special and livelier. It is definitely a treat to hear “oohs and aahs” as your photo album is being flipped through.

Here are some tips and ideas of how you can make your photography experience more interesting.

Lighting

Lighting is the single one reason for the existence of photography (actually for the existence of everything too). We could go on to describe in a whole book on lighting alone. In the future, we will have an entire article devoted to this subject. For now, just remember that lighting is not just daylight and the little flash mounted on your camera.

Sometimes, what makes for an interesting picture is the type of lighting you use on your subject. Be creative, have your subject hold a candle to light up her face, sit your subject by the window where the sun’s rays are coming through, have your subject stand in front of the sun or a bright light source and get a silhouette shot of her, shoot under bright sunlight with their shadow streaking across a flat surface or get your subject to stand near a pool of water and see how light is reflected off her face.

Give a little thought as to how light falls on and off your subject and it should give that little extra sparkle.

Emotion

Get into the habit of taking “emotional” pictures. Many great pictures evoke emotions. These pictures manage to “touch” the viewer beyond just colours on prints. Of course there is the more common type of emotions, namely happy, sad, angry, shocked, surprised and so on. To capture faces genuinely showing these emotions are a sure way of capturing a special picture. Try and discover all the other type of emotions as well, like serenity, loneliness, elation, quirky, excitement and love just to name a few.

Sometimes emotions do not only mean focusing on faces, but rather the feeling which is resulted from pictures of a scenery, memorable items, or simply the general ambience of a picture.

Angle

Have you ever asked yourself, “How did the photographer get that shot?” and you are turning your head left and right wondering at what sort of angle was the photographer in. Many of us take the all too common, “eye-level” shot. All of us see from eye-level and that is what we perceive as normal. Professional photographers often realise the impact of a uniquely angled shot or one that is taken from a different height. They use this method to distort perspective and to give the viewer a unique perception of an otherwise “normal” scene.

The advent of digital photography eases the use of this technique in taking a picture. Simply delete the pictures that you are not satisfied with. The next time you take a picture of a building, try shooting straight up the sides of the building. Perhaps when you shoot beautiful scenery, try going down to knee level and shooting between the blades of grass and if you are capturing that informal picture of a group of friends in a small room, stand up on a chair and have everyone look up at the camera.

Colour

We are surrounded by a harmony of colours. So much so sometimes we take this for granted. Photographers have a knack for getting the right combination of colours to create a good photo. Look out for different temperature of colours in your shots. Colours such as orange, red and yellow, exude comfort, warmth, sensual or even active at times. In contrast, colours like blue, green, indigo shows off cleanliness, purity and coolness. Think about how you would like to “colour” your picture.

There are also exceptions when a dramatic shot is composed with bright contrasting colours. These picture often “jump” out of pages of an album. Take a little time to walk around your subject to see how you can mix the colours in the surrounding.

Sometimes the lack of colours such as in black and white photography, sepia toning or monotone colour enhances the picture by giving focus to shadows and shapes. This is of course done intentionally and with a clear thought about the entire composition.

Shape

Look at shapes as how you would with colours. A shape is more than just the physical characteristic of an item or a subject. Shapes are also related to composition, perception, creative placement and how lights fall on and off your subject. You would probably come across this mostly when you take architectural shots. Take time to plan what sorts of shapes could be placed in your picture at certain angles. And whether this is a pleasing composition or one that may be overly complex.

You should take note of shapes even when you are taking a live subject. Taking a picture of your subject against a bright background would result in a silhouette shot emphasizing on her shape. Look again and you may realize that the shape creates and interesting shadow.

Patterns deriving from shapes are very distinctive features. Patterns are found in the repetitive petals on a flower, the windows on a building, a paved walkway, the roof tiles on a building, clouds formation in the sky and I could go on and on. Patterns can be the main subject of your picture or they may serve as backdrops to pictures of your subject.

Be creative, take a shot through a tyre swing at the playground, frame up your shot with a square window frame or compose your picture with a lotus with multiple angular petals on a round lotus leaf.

These are just some of the basic things which you should consider even when taking a common shot. With practice, it should come naturally to you.

The next time you take a picture,

1) Wait for a couple of seconds

2) Think about these key words; Lighting, Emotion, Angles, Colour, Shape

3) Compose; and

4) Shoot

Eventually, you would be hearing your first chorus of “oohs and aahs” and perhaps even some “wows”.

If you are new to photography and have just picked up that full-featured new “toy” which you have always wanted, you will come to the realization that the new camera also comes with a number of new jargons. A digital camera is a sophisticated piece of equipment. Different from its analog cousins, there is much more that is packed into it.

This may seem daunting at first but taking a little time in the beginning to get acquainted with these jargons would save you a lot of hassle of having to flip through the entire camera manual when you are suppose to be enjoying your new found hobby.

We hope to give you a little head-start in getting to know some of the basic features which you would come across. With practice, you should be able to recall these useful features at your fingertips.

WHAT’S ON YOUR CAMERA

Most of the features of a digital camera are similar to the ones on a film camera. Several items which you should be familiar with are the shutter release button, an on-board flash (with a release button), the viewfinder, the lens and a zoom-in and zoom-out control. Your camera may have unique names for some of the features shared by cameras of other brands. Let’s look at some of the more common features:

Macro : This feature lets your camera focus on items at close range. How close you can focus depends on your camera’s lens construction. Check your camera’s manual on how close you need to be, to use this feature.

ISO : The speed of a film is expressed in an ISO (International Standards Orgainsation) number. On a digital camera, you can change the ISO setting. That means, the larger the number, the faster the speed in which you camera can capture the shot. This is good, but you will be trading the quality of your shot as a faster ISO setting also means grainer shots. So, you should consider if it is worth the trade-off.

WB : You may find at times you need to take photographs under different lightings. Here is where White Balancing (WB) comes in. Tungsten lighting or your common light bulb will give you a warm colour cast and fluorescent lighting can give you a greenish colour cast. With WB, you can neutralize these colour cast by selecting from the setting options, to give you true and natural colours. You could set this feature on Auto and let you camera worry about the proper settings.

Image Quality: Your digital pictures can be saved in a variety of formats, eg. JPEG, TIFF or RAW. These formats determine the quality of the picture which your shots are saved in, with RAW (uncompressed) being the best. TIFF is also another high quality uncompressed picture format. JPEG is the most common format used as it is actually a compressed version of your shot. This means you can save more shots in a memory card with this format. Picture compression, degrades the quality of your picture slightly but is acceptable for most shots which are sent for printing afterwards. Most digital camera gives you several JPG options. A higher JPG compression (lower quality) allows you to save more shots on the same memory card. In the end, the format you use is determined by what you use the shots for.

Image Size: The maximum image size on digital cameras depends on the number of pixels on the CCD or CMOS of your camera. The default setting on your camera would be the largest image size. You can reduce the size of your shots for different purpose or just to save memory space on your memory card.

LCD Screen: This is probably the most useful feature on any digital camera. A colour LCD screen allows you to review your shots after you have taken your picture. On a non-digital SLR camera, you can use it as a digital viewfinder to compose your subjects before taking the final shot. The screen also displays information about your camera setting. (Some advanced cameras have another monochrome LCD display which does this.)

Playback Button: Pressing on this button lets you review your shots which you can toggle with a Forward/Backward control. With playback, you can delete or zoom in and out of your shot to check on clarity. This feature is one of the main reasons why most film camera users have converted to using digital cameras.

INSIDE YOUR CAMERA

CCD/CMOS Chip: The inside of a digital camera is packed with a host of electrical parts. At the heart of it all is the CCD or CMOS. This is a light sensitive chip which captures your shot and converts it into digital information which is then stored on your memory card. The quality of your picture is also affected by how good the chip is. Most new cameras are now fitted with better CCD/CMOS with improvements over past versions.

Camera Lens: Your camera lens is the “eyes” of the camera. Apart of digital SLR camera which has interchangeable lenses, most digital have built-in zoom lenses. You may work the zoom with a toggle button or by rotating the lens. Optical zoom refers to the physical range of your lens. Digital zoom refers to the digital resizing used by your camera to simulate zoom. If you do post-editing on your pictures, you may not require the latter method.

Memory Cards: Memory cards are storage devices for your digital camera. These comes in sizes of 32MB , 64MB , 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and the numbers are still rising! Different manufacturers have come up with a number of formats like CompactFlash (CF), SmartMedia (SM), Memory Stick (MS), MultiMediaCard (MMC) Secure Digital (SD) and xD-Picture Card (xD). This is due to production cost and development of storage speed. It may be worth considering the price of memory cards when you purchase your digital camera.

Batteries: Nowadays, digital camera comes with rechargeable batteries. Aside from some brands which use common AA batteries, some manufacturers choose to develop high capacity batteries of their own. If you tend to leave your LCD on for most of your shots, this will drain the power of your camera more quickly. Having an additional battery is handy and saves on many frustrating moments when you are on that once-in-a-lifetime shot.

DISCOVER PHOTOGRAPHY

Aside from the above, there are many other optional and advanced features which your camera may have. With this basic information, you can go on to discover all your photographic creativity. Over the next few months, we will be teaching you basic and advance photography techniques. Some of these advanced features will come into play and frequent practice will ensure that you get even more acquainted with your camera. After all, you bought your camera for a purpose, why not explore beyond this and not limit yourself to how far you could go.

My Favourite Photographers

• www.stuckincustoms.com – Stuck in Customs is the creation of Trey Radcliff, one of the premier experts in HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography
• www.davehillphoto.com – Dave Hill is a commercial photography who shoots people subjects but edits the final result in a gritty, contrasty and saturated format
• www.manipulator.com – Jill Greenberg is at the forefront of people photography and most famous for evoking ‘controversial’ images of crying children to get emotions in her shots

Malaysian Photography Forums

• www.photomalaysia.com – PhotoMalaysia is a popular local photography website
• www.photokaki.com

Image Banks

• www.shutterstock.com
• www.fotolia.com
• www.dreamstime.com
• www.alamy.com
• www.corbis.com

Hi I’m Kenny Goh.

I’m have been an avid photographer and an enthusiast for more than 7 years now.  I have always been passionate about photography, starting out with simple point and shoot film-cameras. I consider myself lucky to have been a photographer since the pre-digital decade.

Having had the opportunity to shoot negatives as well as colour and black & white slides respectively, I believe that experience of appreciating the true meaning of analogue photography has been close to my heart even with my use of digital photography in this modern day.

Photography isn’t just about putting the world into a picture, it’s about looking inside you, that which perceives the world.

I love the emotions that comes with photography… the passion, the excitement, the excitement, the calmness, the pleasures, the expressions.  It’s all there for interpretations.  Capturing time at its most vulnerable moment and then looking at it over and over again trying to emulate the same feelings… but, then it’s never the same.  That’s what makes it so special.

I’ve been shooting and writing about photography all this while, but I will be rekindling back with the simple pure enjoyment I get to capture moments in time.  I hope you find what I have here, enjoyable too.

Kenny (KenjiImages)