Composition And Design For Better Digital Photos

chapter 1 : the image frame

chapter 2: design basic
chapter 3: graphic and photographic elements
chapter 4: composing with light and color
chapter 5: intent
chapter 6: process
 “ …how you build a picture, what a picture consists of,
how shapes are related to each other, how spaces are
filled, how the whole thing must have a kind of unity.” Paul Strand
Photographs are created within a spatial context
and that context is the viewfinder frame. Facility at
using this frame depends on:

• Knowing the principles of design.

• The experience that comes from taking

photographs regularly.
• The empty frame
• Alignment
• Diagonal tension
• Intersecting for abstraction
 • The 3:2 frame
• 4:3 and similar frames
• Shooting vertically
• Square
• Panorama
• Experimenting with the frame
• Stitching for control and
enlargement
• Golden ratio frame
• Integrated proportions
• A natural, low position
• Favoring the sky
• A choice high or low
• Neglecting the sky
It is especially important to treat basic design as a
form of inquiry. The principles of design in
photography are to an extent, different from those
painting and illustration.
• Dynamic balance
• Bilateral symmetry
• Many
• Regular pattern
• Irregular pattern
• Breaking the pattern
• Oblique direct lighting
 • Linear perspective
• Diminishing perspective
• Color perspective
• Etc.
The marks on a photographic print are never the same as those drawn by
hand. They always represent something that existed. This by no means
invalidates the idea of graphic elements but it does make them more
complex in the way they act.
Another perspective on composition in photography is that of the
distribution of tones and colors. This is intimately connected with exposure
and with the ways in which this is later interpreted-traditionally in the dark
room during printing and development.
Most photography tends towards the pragmatic, simply because
the camera is so well suited to recording and presenting visual
information. In terms of quantity, photography is used more in
mass communication than in fine art.
.
.
In art criticism of all kinds, but possibly more so in photography
process has been given less attention than it deserves. Perhaps
it is because the viewer or critic, has to extrapolate backwards
from the image to guess the situation and what went through
the photographer’s mind.
 •