Beyond the obvious

Looking through photo-enthusiast's portrait photographs on the Internet I notice that nearly everyone goes for a very tightly framed shot with prominent head and shoulders or face. If there is any space in the frame the photographer often gets a comment along the lines, I would have cropped the top or side or whatever. The purpose of this blog post is to suggest that while Robert Capa's maxim, "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," is definitely worth keeping in mind, you can really enrich a portrait by using the environment to help tell the story. I'm not saying anything new here and anyone who studies the work of the "father of the environmental portrait", Arnold Newman, will immediately see that his sitter's face is often quite small in the composition - stuck in the bottom right corner or off to one side of the frame. Arnold intelligently and creatively used the whole context to enhance the image. Editorial phot...

Ken and his border collie, Pinch, stride through along the Bempton cliff tops in Yorkshire. Click on the image to see a larger version. Man and dog have a centuries old relationship, with dogs working alongside us and earning the title "man's best friend'. I think this image illustrates that special bond with Pinch looking up at Ken waiting for his next instruction. She was so attentive. A typical border collie - fast, intelligent and ever willing to please. This image to me has real emotion. Ken strides confidently along through the field. He looks down at his dog and she spins round to look up. The connection between the two of them is as clear as daylight. The image has space to breath, texture, light and a pleasing composition, all working together to tell us the story of man and dog. I hope you like it too. In the coming months I'll share more of my images and tell you why I think they work. Hopefully my thoughts and pictures will interest you and perhaps even ins...

The four images above were taken within a few minutes of each other. The subject is the side of a railcar. The aim was a series of images which explore a single subject with the emphasis on strong graphic compositions. Cheers, Paul

A horse mane makes an interesting subject for a minimalist composition. I like textures so this was a great subject. Working flat out at the moment on several major projects. Just not enough hours in the day to get it all done. So hold your horses, I've got loads of ideas for blog articles, but in the meantime just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still about. Thanks for your visit to my blog. There's plenty of stuff to read on here, check out the archives or do a search for something of interest. I'll try to add a new article this weekend. Cheers, Paul

Full frame landscape composition. This rocky arch can be found in Perranporth in Cornwall. There's an aesthetic discipline in photography which has all but dropped off the radar these days. It's to make your composition in camera using the full available frame and keep that through to the final print without any cropping. Photographers advocating this discipline often proudly printed their shots in the darkroom with a thin black border, or even the film rebate visible in the print to show that their composition utilised the full frame and negative without any cropping. These days with the digital darkroom to hand most photographers crop their images. It's so easy to do. One of the reasons for using the full frame is to preserve quality. The more you enlarge a negative in the darkroom the more the quality suffers. The rule also applies to digital photography. Your camera may have 10mp but if you crop a small part out of it you could be left with a 1, 2 or maybe 3 mp image, w...

There's a eerie feeling around the Wheal Coates cliff-top mine buildings. A sense of history hits you in a place like this where few miners were fit to work past the age of 40 and many died young. Woman and children younger than 12 years old worked above ground. Despite the crowds of tourists wandering around I wanted to capture something of the atmosphere of the place. It was a bright sunny day with a haze hanging over the horizon. I saw Magda walking off toward the next building, her dark clothes contrasting with her sunlit hair. She seemed in that moment almost like a spirit of the past. The new piece of wall brings the image up-to-date and besides creating an interesting piece of contrast prevents the image from being contrived. I used the walls to create a sense of depth, hopefully pulling the whole composition together in spite of how small the focal point, Magda, is in the frame. Ultimately I hope the image show something of the scale of the place and conveys its atmosphere...

Looking back from the passenger seat in the cab of the truck I watched the refeulling operation. This image was taken during a reportage on the road with a construction company. I chose the image because I like the balance between the elements and the overall visual design with various forms and shapes interacting across the composition. The wide angle creates depth and dynamism. Their's a slightly surreal feeling to the whole scene. The image also fits wih my motto 'go beyond the obvious'. If you'd like to read more of my thoughts on using design in photography take a look here . More soon... Paul

Welcome to the second article on design. If you missed the first here it is . There’s a lot to cover and we’ll get there eventually. I think it will take another two or three articles. For now let’s look at a few advanced design strategies . Anchoring the subject, or the lead into the subject, to the edges of the frame. This can introduce a feeling of structure and stability to the subject as well as enhancing the sense of strong design within a composition. Creating a path for the eye to follow. When you design an image you need to lead the viewer’s eye through the composition and make it easy for their eye to move from one element to another. The key here is how easily the eye can move through the composition without being distracted. Western people tend to scan an image starting top left and they then ‘read’ the image zig zagging down and leaving at the bottom right. Of course using strong colour or subjects of interest like faces will change the starting point but overall we still ...

As promised here is the first article in the series on using design principles to improve your photography. The primary concepts you need to think about when designing an image in your mind are: Balance - symetrical or more pleasing to the eye, asymetrical. All images need to be in balance to work well Consistency - this applies across a whole range of aspects, whether working on a series of pictures or in the visual treatment of a single image Contrast - this is a wonderful element to play with and an essential part of design Proportion - the relative size of objects but also the relative importance of visual elements Proximity - this is the single most important design concept for creating meaning in an image. Two elements close together will effect each other's meaning in a fundamental way Simplicity - keep it simple. Single concepts work best. Try to say too much and all messages get lost Unity - this can apply to the overall colour tone, to the harmony in shapes ac...