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March 1, 2001 - Bill Cooper
01:02:01
Composition (Photo)
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Time Text
The End.
You're listening once again to the Hour of the Time.
the people who are listening once again to the power of the
time unwilling to work
or get into the night uh...
photography broadcast and it is thirty nine so
that's what it is i just want to alert you to uh...
an upcoming major expose that we're doing that will be aired on the hour of
the time and on the front page of Veritas News Service on the internet
It's going to be an exposé of what really happened with radio station KDNO in Porterville in the San Joaquin Valley.
What Richard Palmquist has really been up to, and I can tell you this, he's no patriot, ladies and gentlemen.
When you find out what this guy's been pulling on the local patriots down in the San Joaquin Valley for all the time that he owned KDNO before he pocketed a million-plus deal after having coerced the citizens of that valley Into sending donations right up to the time that he pocketed that million-plus deal, telling them that unless they donated, this station was going to go bankrupt and have to fold.
All the time he was meeting in secret to become a millionaire, while taking the donations of the money of all of those people in the San Joaquin Valley.
It's unconscionable.
And that's not all.
A lot of other stuff.
How he sabotaged gun shows and meetings where patriot speakers would come in to speak.
You're going to be amazed.
So watch for that.
And stay tuned.
We're going to have our regular, well, you know what it is.
It's photography night.
Coming up, folks, right now.
I'm going to play a little bit of this.
Well, here we are again, folks, on another Thursday night, photography night.
Tonight we're going to talk about composition.
You know, if you've been looking at your photos lately and you notice that they sort of all look about the same and, gee, they just don't have that snap, that attention-getter quality that you see in photographs that you might find You know, in a magazine somewhere?
And if you'd like to be able to, you know, make those kinds of photographs, well, if you listen carefully tonight, you just might be able to do that.
Because it's all in composition.
Now, let me preface this right off the bat by saying I'm going to give you some rules that all professional photographers follow most of the time.
In any kind of art form, and photography certainly is that, the rules can be broken.
So these rules are not hard and fast.
You can break the rules if, in breaking the rules, you're going to produce something that will be as good or better than if you followed the rules.
So, remember, photography is an art form.
These rules that I'm going to give you tonight will help you make better photographs, will help your composition tremendously.
If you weren't aware of how to do these things before, you're going to notice an immediate improvement in your photographs.
Now, I also have to say something else.
As in all art, there must be an artist.
An artist, folks.
Some people have talent in that respect and some people don't.
Now don't feel bad if you're not an artist because I'm sure that's not ever what you set out to do in life unless of course you did and I hope you succeeded.
But most people who set out to be artists, even who have that desire, really don't ever make it because they don't have that quality of being able to produce something that's above the norm.
Something that will catch people's attention, that's beautiful, that has art recognition.
Now, I don't know why that is, but the same thing is true in photography.
Some people can see photographically, some people can learn to see photographically, and some people never will.
So there are people who just naturally can see that way.
They can see a picture developing before all of the elements come together in the scene and they're ready with their camera and they snap it right when all of the different things come together and they get a beautiful, wonderful photograph.
Those are people who have a natural talent.
They can see.
They're said to be able to see photographically.
They can recognize a photograph as it's coming together, as they walk down the street, wherever they go.
They can see these things because they have something of an artist in them already.
Then there are people who may not have that but can learn to do it.
They can learn to do it.
One of the ways of learning to do it is to follow some of the rules that I'm going to give you tonight and then be able to develop that ability to see photographically and then you will start to do things subconsciously and you'll find that you're producing beautiful photographs with great composition Without even thinking about it.
And then there are the people who just can't get it.
I don't know why that is.
And it doesn't mean they're bad people.
It doesn't mean that they shouldn't be taking photographs because I'll bet you they enjoy whatever photographs they take just as much as the person who takes, you know, the most fantastic photographs in the world.
Remember, like I told you before, we're talking about this subject for fun.
I'm not teaching a class on how to be a professional photographer.
I'm not ever going to do that.
At least not on this radio broadcast.
I'm just trying to help you take better pictures because I love photography.
And I know that some of you do too.
In fact, I know from the response to this Thursday night broadcast that an awful lot of you do.
And I know a lot of you just take photographs just to record the everyday important events in your life.
Little Susie's birthday.
Little Johnny's birthday.
Communion or Bar Mitzvah or whatever it is, you know, their graduations and their little school plays and, you know, the important moments in your adult lives also.
You record your vacations that way.
And it gives you a photographic visual record of your lives.
And believe me, folks, when your loved ones are not around, those are worth their weight in gold.
Listen to me carefully.
If you've neglected taking photographs of your family, your loved ones, and the important events in your lives, listen to me carefully.
Later in life, you're going to regret that.
You're going to kick yourself around the block probably a million times because you didn't do it.
Especially when somebody passes away, or something takes them out of your life and they can't be with you anymore, those photographs are worth More than gold.
Okay?
I hope you understand what I'm talking about.
And I hope you start doing that.
You need those things.
And in your old age, wouldn't it be nice to go back and go over your life and all of the people that were in it and all of your children and grandchildren and the wonderful times that you all had together?
Well tonight's broadcast I'm going to so well the point is it doesn't matter if you have that natural ability or that you can learn it or you can't what's important is that you take photographs and that you enjoy taking photographs and they don't have to be the greatest photographs they don't have to conform to any rules of anybody's but it is important that you have them okay for those of you who want to know how to take better photographs Tonight, composition and composition can make all the difference in the world in what you've been doing.
Most people, and I know why this is, most people, when they take a photograph, they put the person or the subject of whatever scene they're going to record right in the middle of the frame.
Always.
Because they think that that's the most important person or object in that scene, that it should always be in the middle.
Well, that's okay.
Nothing wrong with that.
But, if you stop doing that and learn to do it a little different way, according to some of the things that I'm going to tell you tonight, you'll find that your photographs become infinitely better.
And that you begin to develop the art of seeing photographically.
Okay?
So, I want you all to get a regular piece of blank paper.
Eight and a half by eleven.
You know, just a regular sheet of paper.
You can tear it out of a notebook, or you can get a piece of copy paper, or typing paper, or... It doesn't matter.
Or if you want to, you can tear one out of a... or just a sheet of paper out of a magazine or something, and pretend that there's nothing on it.
That's going to be hard to do.
You really need a blank sheet of paper.
Okay?
So while you're all screwing around for that blank sheet of paper, I'm going to be talking about something else and then I'm going to get to that blank sheet of paper.
So make sure you've got it.
Okay?
That's going to be a photograph, but I don't want anything on it.
You can't be looking at anything on there.
Also get a pencil and something, a straight edge where you can draw straight lines.
On your piece of paper.
A ruler, a straight edge, a book, I don't care what, and a pencil.
Because you're going to draw four lines on that piece of paper and then you won't need the pencil anymore.
Unless you want to take notes.
And I do suggest that you take notes.
See, a lot of today's cameras, folks, lenses, films, they let almost anyone produce pretty good pictures with As long as you're using negative film, pretty good results because with today's modern film, you can be off two stops either side of a correct exposure, which is quite a bit off.
And they can correct that in the lab for you.
And usually you'll get back photographs that you're going to be satisfied with.
Now somebody who's picky and who has an education in photography and is sort of a perfectionist like me, I could see that their picture had not been exposed right, but most of you would never recognize that fact and you're going to be very happy with those pictures.
So, the latitude of film, the sophistication of cameras, lenses, and all of these things let you get back what you're going to perceive as pretty good results most of the time from your little photographic expeditions and your efforts.
On the other hand, though, very few of these acceptable photos should satisfy the creative standards of any serious
photographer.
Photographic excellence, like beauty, Maybe in the eye of the beholder, but most of us would agree on certain criteria.
There are certain rules that are followed by all artists, whether they're photographers, painters, drawers, sculptors.
Doesn't make any difference.
There's certain rules that make sure that the art is better than what it would have been if maybe you hadn't followed them.
Unless you're really, really good, You should sort of stick with these rules.
And if you are really good, then you can violate these rules in order to produce something that might really be outstanding.
I've seen some outstanding photographs that violated a lot of these rules that I'm going to give you tonight.
But they're the exception and not the rule.
Cluttered backgrounds.
Partially blurred foreground objects, or tiny subjects dead center in the frame and overpowered, you know, by a huge mountain and a big meadow and a lot of space.
They're not the ingredients, folks, for appealing pictures at all.
Moving objects, like a car, if you're taking a picture of a car.
And you have the front of the car up against the right side of the photograph.
That makes people feel very uneasy.
They're not going to like that photograph because it looks like the car is running into a wall.
And you have to start thinking like that.
The edges of your photograph are walls.
You don't want to run a car into a wall.
If you're taking a picture of a person and that person is the main subject of your photograph, and you put their face right up against the side of the photograph, You've stood them in the corner and people don't like that.
It gives them an uneasy feeling.
That's why some pictures that you look at, you know, you go to somebody's house and they show you their photographs and you pick one up and look at it and it makes you feel weird, uneasy.
You don't like it and you don't know why because there's nothing in the picture that's bad.
It's the composition that makes you feel that way.
You can't stick people against the wall.
You can't put somebody's face against the wall.
People don't like that.
It's like they're being punished.
Or somebody's being punished in that photograph.
You've got their nose against the wall.
Okay?
You have to give people and moving objects room to look into and to move into.
Okay?
That's one of the first rules.
Anything moving.
A person walking should have room to walk into.
A car moving on a street should have room in front of it to move into.
If you put the front of that car against the edge of the photograph, then you've stopped that car.
Essentially, you've put it against the wall.
You've parked it.
So it doesn't look like it's moving anymore.
It looks weird.
People who view that photograph, look at that car.
It's supposed to be moving, but it can't be moving.
It's up against the wall, man.
Consciously equate the edge of the photograph with a wall, but that's what it is in their mind So remember that the edges of your photograph are walls.
It's like the frame of a painting the frame of a painting Composition folks is the most or not the most in photography, but it's in all art forms and It's one of the most important primary, or it is a primary factor in making a successful photograph, or a successful painting, or a successful drawing.
And it deserves very serious consideration, much more serious consideration than most people ever give it.
Just walking up and putting your subject in the middle of the picture Clicking the shutters is fine for a lot of things.
It might be fine for you forever if you're satisfied with your photographs.
But you're going to find that if you follow some of these rules that I'm going to give you, that you'll be producing much better photographs than you've ever produced before.
Now there's always a backlash against rigid rules.
Nobody likes to be confined by rigid rules.
So I'm going to tell you right off, none of these rules I'm giving you tonight are rigid for any of us, or for any artist for that matter.
They will, they're tools that will help you produce better photographs.
Excuse me folks, I got a little cold and it's kind of sticking in my throat here a little bit.
A badly composed photograph will lessen the appreciation of those who view them.
Some badly composed photographs will make people feel uneasy.
They won't know why they feel uneasy, but they will.
It's not good.
By parking somebody against the wall, you make them look sinister.
You make them look out of place.
You make them look like they're doing something maybe that they shouldn't be doing.
I know that you've all seen pictures like that.
So you know what I'm talking about there.
Even if the person that looks at your photographs doesn't recognize the reason why they don't like it or why it makes them feel uneasy, with a little investigation you'll find that it's Always do the composition when that occurs.
So, one of the things I'm going to teach you right off the bat, you should all have your piece of paper in front of you, I'm going to teach you what we call the rule of thirds.
The rule of thirds.
This is one of the very first things that you ever learn in a basic composition class, in any photography class that you'll ever take.
Any photography school that you ever attend, any college course in photography, one of the first things that they're going to teach you when you get to the part about composition is going to be the rule of thirds.
So you can do it one of two ways.
You can either fold the paper and make creases, or you can draw lines.
What I want you to do is place your piece of paper on a table or a flat surface in front of you.
Measure down one third.
It doesn't matter how you place it.
Elongate it in front of you or, you know, lay it sideways.
It doesn't matter.
Because you're going to do it on both sides anyway.
However you have your piece of paper laying in front of you, come down one third from the top.
One third from the top.
Either fold it and crease it at that spot or lay down your straight edge at that spot and draw a straight line Across from left to right all the way across the paper.
All the way across the paper.
You can either fold that top one-third down and make a sharp crease there.
Or you can lay a straight edge across the piece of paper and draw a line.
One-third down from the top.
When you've done that, come up one-third from the bottom and do the same thing again.
Come up one-third from the bottom And do the same thing again so that you have divided that piece of paper into three equal portions.
Into three equal portions and you'll have two lines.
Either they'll be folded lines or they'll be penciled lines.
Or, for those of you who are perfectionists, pen lines.
A few.
When you have done that, You have the piece of paper divided into three equal portions.
Don't move the paper.
Don't turn the paper.
Go to the right side of the paper.
Come in one third from the right side.
Now you're going to draw a vertical line.
Come in one third from the right side.
Lay down your straight edge and draw a vertical line all the way Across the paper from top to bottom, or you can fold the paper over at that particular point.
Then go to the left side of the piece of paper and do the same thing again.
Come in one third from the left side, lay down your straight edge, draw a line, or fold the piece of paper over and crease it.
So, now you should have a piece of paper that's been divided into thirds horizontally and vertically.
So there should be four lines on your piece of paper, and these four lines should cross in exactly four places.
Now, pretend that this piece of paper is a photograph.
Pretend that it's a photograph.
Here's the way you use this rule.
If you folded to make your thirds, now lay it out and make it flat, but so that you can still see the creases, okay?
That's for people who don't have straight edges or pens or pencils.
You can still participate in this little exercise.
When you've done that, look at the four places where these lines cross.
These are the places where professional photographers place the subjects in their photographs.
Most of the time.
Not always, but most of the time.
And when you go through magazines and And books and, you know, go to art museums and you look at paintings, you'll see that this is followed most of the time.
Not always, but most of the time.
Here's how it works.
If you have a person sitting, sitting, looking up to their left, which would be to your right, you would place that person's eyes, if you can, on the lower left cross.
And whatever they're looking up at, you would try to place that at the upper right cross.
So that you have a person, now if you can't put their eyes there, put the main part of them at that cross.
They're looking up and to their left, which would be up and to your right, at whatever the object is they're looking at should be at the upper right cross.
That's good composition.
If they're looking at something that's outside the photograph and you don't want to show it because you want to give a pensive kind of scene, then you direct their gaze through the upper right cross if they're looking up.
Now, if a person was looking down, you would place their eyes at the upper left.
In other words, if they're looking down and to their left, which would be down and to your right, you would place their eyes, or their head, at the upper left cross, looking down at, or near, the lower right cross.
And you would try to put the subject, or whatever they're looking at, at the lower right cross.
An example would be a teacher standing up in a classroom to the left of the subject behind which the photographer is standing.
And maybe it's a child with his hand raised.
The teacher's asking a question.
You have the teacher's head at the upper left cross and the child at the lower right cross sitting at his desk.
Okay?
Does everybody understand how that works?
That is excellent composition.
It looks natural.
It makes people feel at ease and it enables the eye to follow what's happening in that photograph very easily.
Another example might be a river.
You want to use rivers and roads as leading lines.
It could be a ditch.
It could be a line of trees.
are furrows in a field.
When you use these things as leading lines, what you want to do is use them to lead the eye through the important parts of the photograph to the subject or through the photograph and out of the photograph in something like maybe a landscape.
Okay?
So you would try to wind these or direct them through At least two of these crosses.
Okay?
Now, never photograph a river or road going straight from left to right across the photograph if you're using it as a leading line or as a part of the subject of the photograph.
You never want to do that.
So you would not have a road going from the lower left cross to the lower right cross.
At last, it's not the subject.
If it's not the subject, but it just happens to be in there and you're not going to use it for a leading line, it's okay.
If you're using it for a leading line, you might want to think of putting your subject up near the upper right cross and stand so that the road begins coming into the photograph through the lower left cross going up to the lower right cross or near it where it directs your eye in the natural method that Americans read from left to right Following the road up through the photograph to your subject.
You see how that would work?
When photographing animals or people, remember, focus on the eyes.
Try to put the eyes as close to the crosses as possible.
If you're photographing one couple on a dance floor, one couple on the dance floor and the center of the dance floor is spot-lit with a glow around it, Wait until the couple gets toward one edge of the dance floor, still in the light, put their bodies through, say their knees at the lower cross and their shoulders at the upper cross on one side of the photograph.
That'll give you a beautiful photograph.
And have the man, who always leads in dancing, have his back toward the edge of the photograph, on the side of the photograph, Where you have put the couple in the crosses.
That gives him room to guide his partner into the dance floor.
Remember what we said about moving subjects?
Don't put them up against the wall.
Remember, everybody instinctively knows that the man is doing the leading, so they're not going to pay any attention to which way the girl is looking.
If the girl is looking toward the edge of the photograph, because you placed them on the left side of the photograph, with their knees at the bottom cross, And their shoulders at the top cross.
The woman's going to be looking toward the edge of the photograph, toward the wall.
But nobody is going to notice that, and nobody is going to think it's out of whack.
Because the man leads in dancing, they're going to instinctively check which way the man is facing.
And the man has to have room in the photograph in which to move for everyone to feel natural And to feel that that's a good composition and feel good about that photograph.
Now if you turn the couple around, kept them in the same place, turn them around with the man facing the edge of the photograph, that would look very unnatural.
Okay, folks.
Now these are just, this is one rule, and I can't possibly give you every, every single contingency that you might run into when you go out to compose a photograph.
Just remember that what works when somebody is looking up and to their left will also work when they're looking up and to their right.
You just put them on the other side.
Okay?
The rule of thirds is the guideline for off-center subject placement.
And folks, it works.
If you just do nothing else and learn nothing else tonight but the rule of thirds, your photographs will improve so much that you'll be wondering, why didn't I know this before?
It's the traditional way to create a well-balanced picture.
It's been used by painters and artists and sculptors for centuries.
And every time you look at art, look to see if they followed the rule of thirds.
And most of the time, not always, you'll find that they did.
It balances everything.
It makes it seem natural.
It puts people in the right position for the direction that they're moving.
The same with objects.
The center of any picture, ladies and gentlemen, is just not a satisfying resting place for the eye.
And its central composition, folks, is static.
You know what that means?
It's not dynamic.
It's Bach, is what it is, usually.
To follow the rule of thirds, imagine that your camera's viewing screen is etched with the lines just like I gave them to you on your piece of paper.
Okay?
Four lines crossing.
If you look through that viewfinder and you can imagine those lines there every time you go to take a photograph, the rest will become very easy.
Remember, it looks just like a tic-tac-toe game.
As you view the scene, whether it's a snow-covered tree, or a distant buffalo out in a national park, or a lion in Africa, or the teacher and the student in the schoolroom, a farmhouse, a barn, I don't care what it is, place the subject at one of the intersecting points.
Or if there's two subjects in the photograph, like the example I gave you of the teacher in the schoolroom with the student at a desk, place both subjects at the intersecting lines in a natural position that will balance the photograph.
You'll be very pleased with the results.
I can tell you that.
It works, folks!
It works with a horizontal or vertical framing.
It doesn't matter how you turn your camera.
And it's far more effective than any dead center bullseye composition that you're ever going to make.
So, here's a few examples that might help you sort of visualize what we're talking about.
Always emphasize dramatic skies.
If you're This photograph contains a dramatic sky.
Put the horizon line across the bottom two crosses in your photograph.
Okay?
Put the horizon low in the frame, along the lower line in your imaginary tic-tac-toe grid.
If the sky is dull, but important to the story, don't leave it out, but place it at the higher line.
Place the horizon toward the top of your photograph.
If you have a large subject in a close-up portrait, for example, place the most important subject element, the closest eye.
Always remember this.
If the person's head is turned one way or the other, focus on the closest eye and place the closest eye at an intersecting point in the frame, on one of the crosses in your frame.
Give the person plenty of space to look into.
So if they're looking toward their right, which is your left, you would place them on one of the crosses on the right side of the photograph.
Okay?
Now, if it's a person's face, if it's their eye, and they're filling most of the frame, then you want to put that eye on the top, one of the top intersections of your tic-tac-toe lines.
Excuse me, folks. I hate to cough on the air.
Always remember to leave space for a moving object or person or animal to travel into.
If you don't, it looks very unnatural.
It looks really bad.
It looks weird.
It makes people uneasy.
If it's an animate subject at rest, such as an animal or person, leave space for it to gaze into, for it to look into, if it's not looking directly into the lens.
Now in our culture, Western culture, and if you're from a different culture, you want to apply the rules for your culture if you're going to be presenting your photography to people from your culture.
But in Western culture, we read from left to right, and we also tend to scan a picture or anything else the same way.
It's the normal way our eyes move.
For this reason, folks, it is usually, not always, but usually appropriate to place the primary subject closer to the left side of the frame.
If the subject is in the exact center we are less likely to explore the other areas.
So you might want to center the subject first for focusing and for getting your meter reading.
Then you lock your focus and your meter reading and then recompose.
With most modern cameras you can do that with just a slight pressure on the shutter release button.
If yours doesn't do that then read your manual.
I don't know what camera you got so I can't tell you how to do it.
And usually...
Sorry folks, I had to turn down the pot so I didn't...
Cough on the air.
Usually just a slight pressure on the shutter release button will lock and hold focus and a meter reading on most modern cameras, not all of them.
If you can, move the subject to a more appropriate spot in order to, you know, fulfill your composition rule using the rule of thirds.
If not, move yourself.
See, a lot of people think that, oh, I'm going to take a picture of Johnny.
And they never dreamed that maybe if they took a picture of Johnny from a different angle, it might be a better picture.
So, you've got to, you can either move Johnny, or you can move yourself.
And there's lots of ways you can move yourself up, you can move yourself down, you can move yourself to the right, or you can move yourself to the left, or you can go all the way around in a circle until you find the best composition.
Remember, don't be afraid to move around a subject no matter what it is, whether it's a person, a building, you know?
Chances are you're going to find a better composition than if you try to shoot the subject from whatever point you just happen to come upon it.
So you can move the subject or you can move yourself.
Now, remember this.
When you're shooting animals or children, you'll have a better photograph if you shoot the photograph on their level, not yours.
Most people take photographs of children looking down at the tops of their heads.
Get down!
Get down on the child's level.
And man, your photographs of children will change instantly.
From insulting and boring to fantastic and interesting.
Okay?
Same with animals.
Get down on the animal's level.
Now when I said move yourself, that means you could drive too.
Thank you.
If you're photographing a landscape, how do you know that's the best place to photograph that landscape?
You should explore it if you have the time.
You should drive up and down, back and forth, maybe sometimes for miles.
And you may be surprised to find that even though you thought it was a beautiful landscape at first, that there was a much better point from which to make that photograph.
than the one that you initially chose.
In any off-center composition, folks, with a small center of interest, there will be some empty space in the frame.
So compose your scene so that there is something of interest, or a secondary, perhaps, more distant subject, or a leading line to fill that empty space.
Curves and rivers are wonderful for this.
If what you're photographing is a ways away, and it's part of a landscape, and maybe it's a beautiful farm in a nice rural setting, and there's a creek or a river that runs by, if you can situate yourself so that creek or that river serves as a leading line to lead the eye through that vast empty space of the photograph to your subject, or to the main point of the photograph, you'll make it so much more interesting.
And it doesn't have to be a river or a stream.
It can be a highway.
Or a country road.
Or a fence.
Or the furrows in a plowed field.
Or a tree line.
Or the rows of an orchard.
You can also use these things to frame your photograph.
We'll talk about that maybe later or some other night.
See it helps your eye to explore the picture.
It helps lead your eye through the photograph.
And always remember to place it so that if you're going to be showing it to someone from
a western culture that the eye will be forced to move naturally from left to right in and
through the photograph.
you Now I mentioned framing and I think we're I think we are going to talk about that right now because that's
Some of the most interesting, most beautiful photographs I've ever seen are the result of using objects, buildings, archways, foliage, trees, you know, the space between pickets in a white picket fence to frame the subject of the photograph.
Doorways, windows, things like that.
Maybe the light The natural light that shines in a dark room from a window can be used to natural light photography.
I'm going to tell you some of the most beautiful photography when it's done properly by a photographer who knows what he's doing.
It's the most pleasing, most wonderful type of photography.
And you might want to explore that, but that's not our subject tonight.
We'll talk about that some of the night when we get into lighting.
And lighting is going to take several Thursdays.
Because there's all different kinds of lighting and we'll explore each one of them.
Natural light will take, well, it could take weeks.
We're going to spend an hour on it.
In college, I had, like, whole semesters on, like, natural light photography.
So, that should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.
Often, folks, especially in landscape and architectural photography, the empty space is going to be sky.
And while a beautiful blue cerulean or azure sky is just a wonder to behold, and we have plenty of those here in Arizona, I can assure you, it can add to the appeal of an image.
A pale sky can be distracting.
You can eliminate much of the sky by moving closer or switching to a longer lens or cropping the image when making or ordering the print.
You know, you don't have to accept your prints like they are.
See one of these nights we're going to talk about seeing pictures within pictures.
That's when you want to take your negative back and tell the guy that you weren't cropped and blown up so that you get the picture in the picture which sometimes is a much better photograph than the original one that you took.
And in some photograph you may find several pictures within that picture that you can blow up that will be really wonderful that you didn't even see when you took the first one.
So always study your photographs.
Sometimes there's photographs within photographs that you want to take advantage of.
If none of those things is viable, folks, try to find an object in the foreground that uses a frame above the primary subject.
Some of the things that I mentioned, an archway, a gate, door, window, foliage, maybe there's a branch hanging down from a tree.
It creates an arc.
Looking through a rose plant covered with roses, you know, at a couple, maybe, lying on the grass in the park.
Very romantic scene.
Frame it with roses, if you can find some.
These are just some ideas.
You can, I bet you that some of you can come up with some better ideas than I've ever thought
of.
Branch covered with leaves or blossoms or some commonly used framing devices.
Now when using framing, here are some of the things that you've got to think about.
You might need to explore to find a suitable vantage point for your frame and change your
position before making the picture.
Remember always explore the possibilities and the composition by moving around.
You may end up going back to the original point where you started from.
But unless you explore the possibilities of the composition, the possibilities of framing, you may miss some pretty good opportunities.
A framing device, whatever it is that you're going to use, should be sharply rendered or completely blurred away.
Now listen to me, folks.
It should be sharply rendered as a part of the photograph.
Sharp and visible and identifiable are completely blurred away.
Remember, you do that with the aperture.
For architecture, it's best to keep the frame sharp.
Use a small aperture on the lens.
Perhaps, you know, F16.
Most cameras, that's as far as they go.
Or if you can, F22.
And a wide-angle lens.
For natural objects like foliage, you might want to blur it away.
So everybody knows there's a frame there, but their eye is not going to pay any attention to the frame because the eye never tries to focus on something that's blurred.
So the frame that's completely blurred away is still there as a frame and gives a very pleasing effect to your photograph, but it does something else also.
It makes your eyes go directly to the subject of your photograph.
Your eyes are not going to explore anywhere else.
So, when it's important that you do that, consider blurring the frame completely.
Okay?
And this is a lot of fun!
See, what the frame will become is just a soft wash of color.
And you have to use a wide aperture like f4, f3.5, something like that.
Or maybe a telephoto lens at a wide aperture.
So, learn to use the Different types of lenses with your aperture ring to give you selective focus and depth of field in your photograph.
Remember, telescopic lenses compress and wide-angle lenses separate or move things away.
Okay?
Now the framing object, whatever it is, should never be so large, stunning, or colorful that it draws the eyes of the viewer away from what you intend to be the primary interest of the photograph.
If it is a lot darker than the subject or deep shade, it might be rendered as a silhouette.
If it's real close to you, maybe a little bit of flash can provide a brighter effect.
You can try shooting the situation with and without flash.
You can bracket.
You can do all kinds of things.
Don't be afraid to use film, especially when you're learning, because That's how you learn.
If you don't expose film, you can't learn.
You've got to expose a lot of film to learn.
And you've got to remember what you did so that you can learn.
If you just go out and snap away without paying attention to what you're doing or remembering it or jotting it down or anything, you get the photographs back.
You might have a beautiful photograph there and you won't know how in the world you did it.
And you might have some terrible ones and you'll never know what you did wrong.
The frame folks should also compliment the subject.
A real old mosque, for instance, is not likely to benefit from a frame provided by a brand new concrete structure covered with graffiti unless you're trying to make a specific point, such as how social change and delinquency has affected historical landmarks, for instance, if you want to make a political statement.
If you're framing a subject near the bottom of a picture, it can be equally useful to fill in empty expanses of grass, or clutter, or sky, or whatever, boldly colored flowers, the rocks of an ancient farm fence, you know, an old weathered shack, small hills, shrubs, If you're out in a rural area, farm, implements.
These are all possibilities.
But make sure they're appropriate for whatever your subject is.
And always remember folks, pay attention to depth of field.
Pay attention to what's going to be in focus or out of focus and blurred in your photograph.
Don't overuse framing.
Don't frame every object that you photograph or every person that you photograph because what you do is then you make your photographs cliché and they become boring again.
It's the same as putting the subject in the center of the picture every single time you take a photograph.
It's no different.
If every time somebody picks up one of your photographs the subject is framed, after a while it's not novel, it's not unique, it's no longer something that makes your photographs more beautiful.
Oh, those are Anne's photographs.
She just frames everything.
That's what people will say.
Maybe not to you, but that's what they'll say.
Okay?
Your work will become cliched if you use the same thing excessively all the time.
Can you imagine a travelogue slideshow of Greece where every single building person and landscape image is framed?
I mean you'd be one of the first people to get up and walk out.
And I'm sure that you understand that.
Well that's it folks.
I don't know about you but I sure enjoyed it.
I enjoy every Thursday night immensely.
And I'm glad that you were here listening.
I hope that you learned something.
I hope it helped you improve your photographs.
I hope it makes your life better.
I hope it makes your memories more memorable and more pleasing.
Some day in the future when they will mean so much to you.
Good night.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night, Andy, Poo, and Allison.
I love you.
We got a hell yeah, well round here they come, how you gonna deal with it?
Well both of you live in the San Joaquin Valley of California and were extremely disappointed
when KDNO, your favorite radio station, was sold to a Los Angeles RAP, RAP station.
And you want to know what happened?
Watch for our expose.
Richard Palmquist Expose.
You're going to find out that that guy ain't nothing near What he's been leading you to believe.
He's another Bobo Griffes, if you want to know the truth.
I have to say, he's not quite as dangerous as Bobo Drift has the potential to be.
Only in all fairness, I have to say, he's not quite as dangerous as Bobo Griffes has
the potential to be.
He's not as dangerous as Bobo Griffes.
He's a good guy.
And here's Bing Crosby.
Down the road to Mandalay Where the flying fish play
And the dawn pops up like thunder It goes
Singing dogs and cabarets Having a barrel of fun
One night she shot out the light Now I'm on the run
Oh, say that pistol down, babe Drop that derringer, dog
Pistol pack in my mind I'm a-fixin' to leave the hall
Never flirt with a gal named Heather Down in Texas, oh
Listen to what I'm telling you.
Use what you have to say.
It ain't as difficult now, babe.
Release that revolver.
This goes back in my mind.
Wind up in the stir.
Now listen to the story of a redhead girl named Peg.
She shot a bustle in the air.
Hit me in the leg, say that pistol down, babe.
Only that thought is more.
Pistol-packin' mama, I'm gonna beat you to the door.
Oh, lay that pistol down, babe, lay that pistol down.
Pistol-packin' mama, lay that booger down.
Oh, lay that pistol down, babe, lay that pistol down.
Pistol-packin' mama, lay that thing down before it goes off and hurts somebody.
Lay that pistol down.
Pistol-packin' mama, lay that thing down.
You know, Kraft Music all grabbin' a short-wave boost to our fighting men all over the world.
You know, it's increasingly amazing to me how many ways are granted us to give them a boost.
For instance, waste kitchen fats.
Certainly nothing to us, but they're a vital ingredient in the manufacture of high explosives.
That's the stuff that's rockin' our enemies right now, poor and ashed.
The OPA has now authorized your butcher to pay you two brown points for every pound of fat you save.
Two brown points and four cents in cash.
That's certainly pretty good pay for helping to win the war.
So keep rendering the fat pouring into smooth edged cans and bringing it to your butcher.
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