Elements of Control – CanonBlogger

Five Elements of Control: #5 Composition

September 18, 2009 Jason3 Comments

You knew it had to come back to this, right? I know, everyone is screaming by now “But Jason, you’ve talked about the Rule of Thirds until the cows literally came home!” Truth be told though, most people think about compositional positioning with their subject matter. While it’s true that subjects are ideally placed on a hot spot or along one of the gridlines in the ROT grid, but you can break the rules too, ya know! I say, put anything you want on a grid spot. Or don’t have a specific point of interest! Make the subject of your photo the space – negative space, as previously mentioned, can be a powerful thing!

You can also think of the ROT grid for any point of interest, not just subject points of interest. And, since we know that light (luminance, contrast, whatever your semantics prefer), geometry, color, and context can all be points of interest, then you can put any of these there and create visually grabbing photographs.

The greatest part of this exercise though, is that now we are looking at everything in a lot of new and creative ways. I bet you are asking yourselves lots of questions now: Does that light look good? DO those colors complement each other? What about that round wheel in a square table – that could be interesting, right? Keep on thinking and looking at the world around you from different angles and perspectives. Sooner than you realize it (if not already), your eyes will dart all over the place looking at things and you might not even be conscious that you are doing it.

When we migrate these exercises from the front of our brain to the back of our brains, making them automatic to the point where we no longer need to even think about looking for things – we just do it, then believe it or not, the compositional perspective also becomes second nature. You are already looking at how the light and colors on this corner of the room are really awesome contrasts to the darker shadows on the other side – and how cool is it that the funnel of light literally cuts through the darkness on that gridline?!

Some days you’ll have epiphanies, realizations, and great moments to capture, while others you may not see as many. Rest assured though, once your brain and eyes are trained to look for it – you’ll see it everywhere you go. So, take a look at the world around you – see what catches your eye – ask why if you like, but enjoy your moments, because these are the ones where you can really get creative with composition and take your photography to the next level! Just remember the Five Elements of Control:

Luminance
Color
Geometry
Context
Composition

Have a great weekend everyone – this officially wraps up my first week-long thematic series of blog posts. Hopefully you’ve found each one rewarding individually, and I would welcome any feedback, thoughts critiques, and comments, because this will likely become an eBook download. I’ll expand on each element some more, and include even more photos as examples of each, along with detailed critiques and highlights to help show readers why certain ones work, and others don’t.

So please let me know your thought! Who knows, feedback may get you a free copy of the eBook and a mention in the credits if you do! Thanks too, for all the comments already throughout this week, with your comments and insights on both the written word and photographs. We’ll be back to regular posting starting Monday! Until then, Happy Shooting!

Grab the Feed

Five Elements of Control: #4 Context

September 17, 2009 Jason1 Comment

Have you ever seen something that looks so out of place that it catches your eye? Well catch it with your lens too, because contextual positioning of subjects in interesting or unusual/unexpected areas creates visual interest. This is what I refer to as controlling the context of your subject. So many times I’ve heard people tell me “but how can I change the surroundings?” The answer lies not in changing the surroundings of subjects you want to shoot, butin reversing that idea: find unusual subjects in your given surroundings. Say you are on a photo walk and in a city area. Well, try and find subject matter that contradicts the sense of city.

Additionally, you can also create contextual appeal by the use of negative space too. See something standing all by itsef, or away from other things? That’s a picture possibility! Conversely, something that is amidst other things could be a cue for creative expression. What if you saw a plastic water bottle among some glass beer bottles? That could be cool…or what if you had a computer mouse sitting in a mousetrap? You can create subject and background contextual associations in your own environment too ya know. Photographers that make good money do it all the time. (Hint: that’s called stock photography! 🙂 )

Here’s a few examples to give you a springboard for creativity. Find something you like? Tell me below! (I love to get feedback on photos just like everyone else…) Got your own ideas? Share those below too! Sound off in the comments, and don’t forget to keep on shooting! (That Flickr Contest thread is still alive and kicking you know – great chance to win $500 of gear, including a Thinktank bag System and a copy of the Topaz Labs PS Plugin Bundle!)

Grab the feed

Five Elements of Control: #2 Color

September 15, 2009 Jason2 Comments

Yesterday was all about light and the way that contrasts or changes in that light can have a pretty dramatic impact on your work when you present it to others. Of equal importance to photography though is the element of color. If you don’t take color shades and variances into consideration, then you have lost an element of control in your photography.

When we think of color, many of us are familiar with the three primaries. Red, Green, and Blue as these are letters of one of the most common color spaces (Adobe RGB). Surely though, even though we may not consciously think about it, there are more than three colors out there. Even the traditional axiom of a ROYGBIV rainbow only indicates 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), and there are way more than that within the color spectrum. So, let’s take a look at the entire spectrum of color:

Since colors represent particular wavelengths of light, you can see how light and color tie into one another very quickly. Just because you define something as “red”, doesn’t give a complete description of that color, because there can be so many nuances, shades, hues, or wavelengths of red. So, in understanding that color is something we can control for, it’s first helpful to know that you are still controlling for luminance, light, or contrast while also controlling for color, because the shades you let come through in your photos will also be somewhat controlled by the amount of contrast, luminance, or light.

Another way in which color can control how people view and perceive your images is to understand the idea behind complementary colors. Some colors work well together, while others don’t. For instance, take a look at the photo below:

So, in looking at this photo – which do you think the contrasting colors are? A typical kneejerk reaction would be to say the yellow and the black are the two contrasting colors. Black though, really from a visual perspective means a total lack of color (black = nothing, white = everything…remember grade school?). So, really the contrasting colors would probably be the yellow and what? The greens of the stems or the browns of the center? A case could be made for either, but I am going to go with the browns here. If you look back at the color spectrum, you can see that yellow and brown are relatively close together (as are yellow and green) – they are actually right next to one another – so they complement each other nicely. It’s also no accident that these colors are in use with the black background too. Because the colors are of the brighter variety, they look better with a darker background. There’s two elements of color at play here then, complementary colors (colors that work well together due to proximity on the color spectrum) and color luminance (light versus dark colors). If you want a lighter color to stand out, then place it in a scene where the rest of the background is either much darker (or vice versa). To show how this works, look at the same image when I replace the background with white rather than black:

See how brighter colors look with a brighter background? Now granted, the mask job was rather quick and messy, but you can see how the colors and their background can have a huge impact on the quality of your work. While this speaks more to the luminance and contrast factor from yesterday, it can also help in understanding how to position colors in your work so subjects can get the attention they deserve. Pretty cool, eh?

So, which are your favorite complementary colors? Do you like the yellows and greens? Or the red and blues? Or violets and purples? Don’t forget color shades too – as light never really leaves the picture (both figuratively and literally speaking)! Which scenes do you like? Answering these questions in not only the works of others, but also in your own work can help develop your sense of style and define what makes your work unique, so embrace your originality! Sound off in the comments with your take on controlling color in your images!

Five Elements of Control: #1 Luminance

September 14, 2009September 9, 2017 Jason5 Comments

This week I am doing something special here on the blog – starting a week long series on the subject of Control. We can control our photography in several different ways, and I’ve seen different outlets talk about each of these (and others) to a certain degree, but I’ve not seen many that address all of these elements collectively. Since a discussion of all the elements that go into a photograph would be both exhaustive and likely impossible to touch on everything, it would probably be better to narrow that focus (pardon the pun) on some of the more salient elements to consider. Today, the element of control that I’ll be looking to in more depth is:

Contrast/Luminance

Contrast, or luminance, can be described as the tonal range of light within a photo. If the tonal range is broad, then that means we have an extensive range of tonality from the lightest point to the darkest point in the photo. Likewise, a narrow tonal range will mean that we have a limited range of tonality from the lightest point to the darkest point in your photo. Take a look at the following two photos and see if you can determine which one has a broader and a more narrow tonal range.

It should be pretty clear that one has a wider range of luminance to it than the other. What’s exciting to learn here though is that this is the same photograph! That’s right! I simply changed the exposure settings in ACR to output a different result. Different tastes will look at each of these differently, and like one over the other for a variety of reasons. What’s important to understand here though, more than anything else, is that all I’ve changed is the luminance. The tonal range or contrast of luminance can have a powerful impact on a photo, either by how it limits and defines focus or by its range and extent of difference between high and low luminance points as we change from white to black.

So, why am I talking about luminance first? Because it is probably the most important element to control. After all, luminance (or contrast) deals with the principle of light! Photography by definition means to paint with light ((look up the Greek roots photo and graphos) Without understanding how to control for the element of luminance (a.k.a. contrast or light), the rest won’t really matter too much. Rather than say more or less luminance is better or worse than the other, (because it really is a matter of subjectivity) I’ll simply leave you to ponder a few things between now and tomorrow:

Which one do you like better?
Why?
What other elements of control can you think of?
Finally, what other examples of the effect of luminance can you think of? Got any you’d like to share?

Feel free to share your thoughts and sound off in the comments or with me directly via email. Until tomorrow and the Second Element of Control, Happy Shooting!