A number of weeks ago I wrote a tip on the portrait photography composition technique of Giving Your Subject Space to Look Into. A similar tip for action photography is to give moving subjects space to ‘move into’.
Some call the space in front of a moving subject the ‘active space‘ in a photograph. Alternatively the space behind your subject is often called ‘dead space’.
The reason that this compositional technique is used is that when someone views an image and spots that your subject is moving in a direction - their eye naturally moves in that direction too. It’s quite instinctive.
Working with the way your viewer will instinctively view your image helps to create balance, drama and anticipation in your shot.
This technique of creating active spaces in action shots can be applied in many types of photography including sports (cars, bikes, people etc), wildlife (photographing a running animal) or virtually any other subject matter that is moving.
PS: Of course as with every rule there are times to break this one - but in general I find that it works well.
A picture is worth a thousand words - or so the saying goes.
Please note - at the end of this post there is an assignment that relates to it that we’ll be doing together this week in our Digital Photography Flickr Group. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
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There are many reasons that I love photography, not the least of which is that a photograph (or a series of them) has the ability to convey stories to those that view them.
Over the centuries people have gathered around campfires, in town squares, over meals and in other places to tell there stories and these gatherings have become central to the shaping of cultures and communities. In more recent times some people have lamented that the art of story telling has been lost amidst the rise of different technologies.
Perhaps there is some truth in this - but I also wonder if perhaps it’s just the way we tell stories that has changed. One such medium for story telling in the time we live is digital photography.
A photograph has the ability to convey emotion, mood, narrative, ideas and messages - all of which are important elements of story telling.
Of course the gift of story telling is something that doesn’t just happen - good story tellers are intentional about learning how to tell stories and practice their craft. Following are a few tips for photographic story tellers.
Read the rest of this entry
“Good things come to those who wait”
This old proverb was one that I heard a lot of growing up - it was a favorite saying around our house and one that I think has had a fairly significant impact upon me in numerous aspects of my life - not the least of which is my photography.
While digital photography is sometimes known for it’s spontaneity I’ve found that most successful photographers also have the ability to sit with a scene or subject for a considerable amount of time until the situation is right to get things just as they should be to get the picture perfect.
Patience comes into play in many forms of photography:
- Landscape - there are many aspects of landscape photography that takes patience ranging from scoping out the perfect place to shoot from to waiting to get the light just right before shooting.
- Sports - last year when I was at the Australian Open (tennis) I went along expecting that the skill I would need the most was to be spontaneous as a photographer but I came away realizing that the only reason I came away with any decent shots was that I’d really persisted and taken my time in thinking through my shots. It was only because I continued to shoot over a longer period of time that I honed my framing and exposure to get things just right.
- Portraits - studio portraits can be a little more predictable than candid portrait shots but in both cases people are unpredictable beings and getting a pose just right or capturing an interaction between two subjects can take considerable time to get right.
- Wildlife - taking photos of animals is even more unpredictable than photographing people and as a result there can be long waits to both find them in the wild but also to get capture them in a the right position, light and framing.
- Macro - similarly taking macro shots is generally not an overly spontaneous thing to do, especially when your subject is a moving one (insects for example) and when you’re shooting in a natural environment when the light changes and wind blows.
The list could go on….
I find that the actual moment that you take an image is often a very spontaneous one but that to get to those moments you often need real patience.
Of course patience is not something you can really teach in an article like this - except to say that it’s a skill to work on and that great photographers generally set aside time to hone their craft.
I’ve had a number of emails from readers of Digital Photography School this week with some great suggestions on how we could improve this site.
One of the suggestions that came up on numerous occasions was that readers wanted a place to post their pictures and talk about their photography. Some also wanted a place to post photos that they took after reading the tips on this site (ie after the sunsets post to post some of their sunset shots).
As a result I’ve started a group on flickr which we can use for this type of thing. You can find it at Flickr: Digital Photography School.
To post photos or comments to it you’ll need to join flickr (there is a link at the top of each page saying ’sign Up!’). You then need to join the group.
There are really two parts of the flickr group:
1. Discussion - this is an area for you to chat about your photos. In this section you’ll see I’ve already posted an assignment to post your self portraits. ‘Assignments’ will be regular (probably weekly) tasks that I’ll give you to do that will generally related to one of the tips I’ve written on this site each week. You can post your photos in it and discuss one another’s shots (be nice - it’s not a competition but instead is a place for us all to learn and improve our photography).
2. Pool - this is a place where DPS group members can post their photos (you can post up to 3 per day - but you do need to join the group first). So far there are not many photos in the ‘pool’ (you can see it here) because I’m the only member of the group but they’ll roll in. Feel free to post any pictures you’d like into the pool (please keep them family friendly). I’d especially love it if you tell us about the photo as well, tell us where you took it, how you took it, what you like about it etc. The point of this site is to learn how to use a digital camera better and I’d love our flickr group to tap into that.
There is more information on how to use ‘groups’ at flickr on their group help page.
I hope you’ll join me in the group. It will only ever be as good as the effort we put into it so let’s give it a go and see if we can make it work together. Shoot me an email if you want to make any suggestions along the way.
- Are you a digital camera owner with a tip to share?
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- Are you interested in helping thousands others to improve their digital photography?
If so we’d love to feature one or more of your digital photography tips or case studies here at DPS.
What are we looking for?
- We accept tips and tutorials for beginner, intermediate and advanced digital photographers
- We are looking for tips on everything and anything related to digital photography (including post production)
- We’d love your tip to include an original photo (at least one) that illustrates what you’re writing about (if you’re struggling with this please let us know - we might be able to find you a shot to use)
- Alternatively we love to publish short case studies from photographers willing to talk us through how they took an image photoshoot with details of technique, settings and lessons learned
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- We give you a byline and include a link back to your blogs, website, photolog, flickr account, photography studio site (wherever you have a web presence) in return for your tip or tutorial
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To submit your tips or tutorials please email us via our contact form.
Please note: While we’d love to use everyone’s submissions we cannot guarantee to do so due to the numbers of people who read this site but also because we want to keep the quality high. If you’re unsure on whether a tip will be suitable for the site and want to check please feel free to contact us with the idea or even the first paragraph or two and we’ll let you know if we think we can use it.
I want to tell you a story about a photographer with an addiction to a colour….
I spent some time this week chatting with a photographer who is obsessed by green.
He’s a professional wedding photographer who takes ‘normal’ shots when he’s on the job but who in his spare time hunts down green things to photograph.
Green grass, green bottles, green lizards, green bottle tops, green anything and green everything.
It’s a bit of an odd obsession to have and when he told me about it I began to wonder whether he had ‘issues’ to deal with. In fact I almost wrote him off as a bit of a nut…. until…. he showed me his studio.
On entering the studio I felt my breath taken away. The walls were write (a very minimalistic look) and scattered around them were the most wonderful collection of large, vidid, bright green images.
I can’t actually show you his work as I didn’t have my camera with me (and I doubt he’d have let me photograph his photographs) but the images were of a similar ilk to the ones in this article.
His shots were of a large variety of different subjects - in fact they were a bizarre mix of genres of photography in the mix.
There were of course nature shots (as you’d expect with green) but there were many other images also including still life, macro shots, architectural shots (green buildings) and even portraits (don’t ask).
What struck me by the experience of entering his studio was the power of colour - especially the accumulation of the same colour in multiple shots in the one space.
Many of the images he’d taken really broke many of the rules of composition that we speak about on this site every day.
They ignored the rule of thirds and they had very few features or focal points - except for the one feature that drew them all together - their ‘greenness’.
I’m not suggesting that we each choose a Colour to obsess about but it struck me as an interesting exercise to experiment with for those of us who display our images in collections (whether that be in an album, at an exhibition, on a wall as a series or even online on a website).
Putting multiple images together with diverse subjects but the same colour is definitely an eye catcher and it evokes emotion in the viewers of the shots.
