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So, when I click my best sunset photograph on my holiday at Goa, how should I compose the frame? Where should I place the sun? Where the horizon line? What while balance I should use while taking a photograph at twilight? So what is a frame within a frame?
When I click Hussain Bolt just crossing the hundred meter line, how should I compose it; should I need to freeze the moment or should I capture the movement within the frame ?
Like those hundred questions – ask them, they have the answer now… little more than 20 associates, who have the enthusiasm towards photography, no matter how much a saturday matinee show calls them, no matter how much distance he has to drive from home to come to office premises on a weekend, no matter what kind of sophisticated camera they have, or even they don’t have …
so we all met at mercury training room on a lazy saturday afternoon at GVC office of CTS at Bangalore … we all had one thing common amongst us … passion ! Passion for photography …
It was scheduled at 2 o clock hoping that all the boring lectures will end up by 4 and then we all go for a joyride … a photo walk … as we started little late, we were overshot by 30-40 min or so …
It was fun throughout the sessions, it was fun discussing various experiences and put it together in a single presentation … it was fun sharing behind the stories while making the compositions …
think and decide – open your heart and mind
All we wanted to open our heart and mind … no prejudice, no presumptions… just thinking and deciding what we want to shoot, be it portrait, be it macro, be it abstract or be it street photography … we have decided not to visually compose the imaginary picture unless we see it, thus we will have a fresh mind to look at the objects differently …
And while we do look at the things differently than others, we also learned some tips and trick which makes composition of the scene through our viewfinder …
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frame within a frame
… is one such thing … let us take a step back, lets us try to frame the scene or object with the surrounding elements falls within the composition … it gives us a different perspective always… this is how we see it differently … let by us not bound ourselves by rules, let’s just listen to what our aesthetical values says…
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wait and watch
Alex Webb said, street photography is like a walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait, and be confident that the unexpected, the right moment awaits just around the corner … we agreed, we need to be patient , we need to watch and wait, watch and wait … and remain confident …
Right moment will surely be around the corner!
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Pattern and abstract and odds
Many odds and many patterns… be it the design made by underwater current on sands; be it the body art of zebra; be it the man made patterns or be it created by nature … all surround us every now and then, everywhere , here and there … the elements form patterns, element makes odd … look differently, before you shoot, see for yourself …
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layers
All you see are layers… sound weird … seriously … all actions, all real life events happen in layers… imaginary horizontal layers always surround us … it is three dimensional always… but how do we show the layers in two dimensions? … Foreground, background and intermediate layers etc are the answers… it creates the feel of the image of being there … it gives us a lots of depth of the photograph… our eyes travel from the foreground and pass through the intermediate layers and reach to the background … it is like conquering each layer and learning about the elements in it … this is little complex though but… what is the joy of composing an image, if I can’t play hide and seek with the elements, if I can’t hide behind the foreground objects…
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by now, we all know, it also gives the visitors a food for thought and food for ideas… what is better? a bare naked face-to-face encounter or a little mischief of playing hide and seek?
Portraits
what’s there in your mind when you make a portrait? is that the face you want to click? is it the emotions of the person you want to click? is it the connection between you and your subject? Which one? … the answer is “all”… we want all the above said things to be captured in a portrait, but one element alone does not make a successful portrait …
it is all in eyes … remember the famous painting of Leonardo Da Vinci; Monalisa ? so focus at eyes, everything will fall in line … make an eye contact … let the eyes talk to each other… make her feel comfortable in front of the lens and there you go… follow your heart and click when it says …
We discussed lot more … we discussed how ISO works, what is 1/3 is rule for photography and many more … a quick handout is available here for your reference …
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the photo walk
… the fun part was this … it WAS a sight just before the evening at GVC premises… just looked here and there, our promising photographers were making all possible angles, focuses, vantage points etc … applying all learning at the field… and what a joy of seeing those images on the screen …
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