One of the most dynamic compositions is to get things into a triangle or a V shape, this gives the eye somewhere to move from and/or to and so gives a pleasing effect. Take a look at the following photographs and notice how much more dynamic and interesting the 1st photogrpah is compared to the second.

portrait photograph with good composition -traiangles

Here it is again with the traiangle drawn in; in case you can’t see the shape.

portrait photograph with trainagle line drawn in

And here is the not so good composition.

photograph showing not so good composition

Just thought I would write a few hints and tips on planning your wedding from the photographic side of things.

Most people when planning a wedding concentrate on the venue from the point of view of location and cost and rarely think about the photography  that will happen on the day. When selecting a venue things to think about from a photographic point of view are:

• in the event of rain (or other freak weather) where will the photographs be taken, is there an area under cover (does not have to be inside a building, just under cover i.e. an entrance canopy or 3 sided barn) with enough light and space for all the people and the photographer.
• Is there space enough in the gounds for the group photograph
• if there is bright sunshine is there a shaded area for the photographs to be taken in, you need this for 2 reasons, 1/ bright sunlight for people photography does not make for good pictures, so you need shade to remove the bright areas from peoples faces and remove people squinting or sunspots (those bright dots of colour in pictures where you are pointing the camera in the direction of the sun), and 2/ to keep everyone cool on a really hot day.
• Look at the voliage around, is it fairly consistent and not too busy, are there pretty flowers around to be used in the background.
• Is there a building site on the other side of the fence of the property, makes for ugly backgrounds and possibly noise so making it hard to give instructions.
• how far from the bar is the area to be used for photography too far and it will take ages to get the people needed in the picture to the right spot and so the photographs will take ages to complete (if they do get completed).
• how close to the church are the photographs going to be taken, are the bells going to be ringing and so make it difficult to hear people.
• what kind of ground do you need to cross to get to the area to be used, is it a long way for people in high heeled shoes (a complaint I often hear) or across wet ground or soggy grass.

Getting back to composition (sorry had a slight diversion in to holiday snaps there), there are several ‘rules’ to composition (all rules can be broken), today I want to discuss straight lines or the lack of them. When composing a picture always try to angle the shot so that you remove any straight lines particularly where people are concerned. That is not to say that you remove ALL straight line e.g. horizons should always be straight and level particularly where water is concerned. Lets use an example: below is an image of 2 people who happen to be roughly the same height, if they had their heads were at different heights or the shot was cropped much more so that only their head and shoulders can be seen it would be more dynamic.

Not good-photograph of 2 people with heads at the same height creating straight lines

Take a look at the next photograph where the 2 people are at different heights and so create a diagonal line between the heads and so looks a little more dynamic.

better-photograph pf 2 people with heads at different heights and so creats diagonal lines

Next time I will look at how this can be improved some more.

I was recently talking to someone who had bought a new compact camera and proudly stated that it had 13Mega pixels. That got me thinking about the marketing hype around cameras, manufactureres are using the numbers game to pursuade us to part with our money. Unfortunately the higher the number of pixels does not necessarily mean a better quality picture, in fact quite the opposite. The biggest factor on picture quality is the size of the sensor, the larger the sensor in general the better quality picture that is produced. Why is this? Well without getting too technical it is all to do with noise (unwanted information) in relationship to the light that we do want and the smaller the pixel the greater this ratio becomes and so the noiser your photographs will appear. (Noise is usually very fine black dots on your photo, usually more noticable in pictures taken at night in man made lighting.) So if the sensor size stays the same and they add more pixels, in general the picture will become poorer in quality. There are other mitgating factors like the quality of the process to produce the sensor that will affect the quality of the photograph as well, but in genreal the higher the camera price and the larger the sensor size the better the quality, so pictures from the extremely small sensors on mobil phone cameras are never going to be as good as those taken from a compact which will never be as good as those taken with a full frame (35mm) sensor and so on. If you want to get more tachnical about all this there is a superb article which discusses all this and much more at the website found here :http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm

When taking photographs of people there are several things to consider where composition is concerned. In this photography tip I shall concentrate on the close up.

Portraits usually look better if they are taken as close ups, concentrate on the head and shoulders. If you get in really close it does not matter if you crop off the top of their head, but it is usually better to not crop off the chin (there are always exceptions to the rule). Take a look at the example below, the 1st image is full length of 2 people:

Photograph of 2 people full length

The next image is the same picture but cropped to show just their head and shoulders, it has a much more intimate feel about it, you can see the detail of the faces and feel much closer to the people, more like you are there with them, rather than just looking at the at them.

Photograph of 2 people close up

Here is another example, the 1st image is of a baby full length, it is just a baby, you don’t get any feeling of being with the baby or any detail of the face:

Photograph of baby full length

The next photograph is really close to the baby and you really start to feel like you are there with the baby and get a feel of the mood she is in, it has much more impact. In fact it could even be cropped a bit to remove some of the forehead and the red top.

Photograph of baby close up