PP - Composition

Balance

Which is heavier: a ton of lead or a ton of feathers? When it comes to balance in photographic composition, it's not just a mathematical equation, it's more a matter of feeling. It's subjective, not objective, but with a few examples, you'll get the idea of why a single feather can indeed balance a ton of lead!

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Angle of View Our lens's angle of view determines how much or how little of a scene we can fit in, but we also need…
Armature The armature of the rectangle is a grid of lines and intersections at which important and significant elements in a painting sit. Many Renassiance…
Balance Which is heavier: a ton of lead or a ton of feathers? When it comes to balance in photographic composition, it's not just a…
Contrast Contrast describes many different things. Black and white is the ultimate contrast, but so is light and heavy, cold and hot, red and green,…
Direct Attention If you want to simplify composition down to a single principle, it's this: how do we direct our viewer's attention to what we…
Dynamic Tension This is a tough one to explain, despite so many people talking about it! A photograph without dynamic tension can look boring, staid,…
Formats Most photographers work with just one format - the format of the camera they use. However, there's no need to stick to this format…
Golden Mean The Rule of Thirds is far better known than the Golden Mean, but experts will generally tell you the Golden Mean is the…
Horizons Where you place the horizon has a big impact on how your viewers perceive your subject. Simply speaking, in a landscape a high horizon…
Leading Lines Not all lines are leading lines. Leading lines, straight or curved, by definition are leading your viewer to look at something, so when…
Lines Lines can be leading lines, but they dont have to be! They can simply act as accents or punctuation marks to your composition. Or…
Space Negative space is a cool term used when discussing the merits of a photograph. 'There's too much negative space' or 'It needs more negative…
Panorama In Australia, Ken Duncan made the panorama incredibly popular for landscape photography, but panoramas have been featured on our walls for centuries. And they…
Pattern and Texture Photographic composition is all about making things interesting and exciting for the viewer - and viewers love patterns and textures. While you…
Points Points might be what your photograph is all about - the point to which your directing your viewer. A point might be incredibly small,…
Shapes In some ways, composition is like geometry in school when you used set squares and compasses to make shapes on a page. What shapes…
Size of Display In our modern world of digital displays, we tend to accept that the size of a photograph equals the size of the…
Timing You can have the best camera, the best light and an amazing subject, but if you don't press the shutter you won't have a…
Viewpoint Where you stand or sit when you take your photograph can have a huge impact on what you're telling your viewers on a subconscious…
Visual Weight Visual weight is another way of talking about 'balance', but it's more than that. Perhaps you don't want balance, you want impact instead…