Night photographer Lance Keimig takes you on a journey to the Aurora Borealis and helps you from start to finish, beginning with preparation for cold, Icelandic weather and finishing up with exposure...
In this third part of the series on composition we continue exploring the
compositional elements of nature photography and how they work together to form a
complete photograph.
Vertical or Horizontal
Often in photography, the subject or scene will suggest a vertical or
horizontal format. Take EJ Peiker’s image of Pyramid Lake below for
example. Considering the many layers of lines in the image, and the length of the
mountains in the background, a horizontal composition was a natural choice for
this scene. Sweeping horizontal lines often lend a feeling of comfort and ease to
an image and EJ has done a beautiful job of making a calming, restful yet
striking image.
The image could have been composed vertically, but the sheer number of
horizontal lines contained within such a small vertical space, and the
significant crop the mountain would endure, would create a good deal of tension
in the image, resulting in the exact opposite effect as the peaceful and relaxing
horizontal image.
Many pros suggest that if you shoot for editorial purposes, you would be wise
to get into the habit of shooting both vertical and horizontal versions of a
scene, so you can offer more than one option to an editor. This is excellent
advice for all photographers. There have been several times when I have found
that I have changed my preference for a vertical or horizontal format for a
particular image.
Depth
Foreground: Objects in the foreground are closest to the
bottom edge of the photograph. In many specialties of nature photography the
foreground is a popular place to situate objects that are complimentary to and
support the main subject. The foreground is also a place where skilled
photographers situate objects or lines which will lead the eye into the
photograph.
Middleground: The middleground is the space between your
foreground and background. In wildlife photography, the middleground is usually
where the main subject is placed. When using long lenses with wide apertures,
objects on this plane will be in sharp focus while the foreground and backgrounds
are softly blurred. This is often desirable in wildlife photography because our
subjects appear isolated and our focus is forced onto the subject.
Background: The importance of the background is dependent on
the scene. While in many landscape photographs the background is part of the
subject itself, some close-up and wildlife images rely heavily on uncluttered,
undeterminable backgrounds for their success. Many bird photographers strive to
photograph birds against backgrounds of pure color and little texture. This can
create a dramatic three-dimensional effect and really make the subject pop out of
the picture.
Many wildlife photographers place too strong an emphasis on the neatness of a
background. I prefer backgrounds with mostly color and a little texture to give
it some character. In general, however, I feel that if a background supports and
compliments the main subject, is visually pleasing, and works well with the
composition, then it has done its job and I can address the next part of the
photograph.
Subject Placement
The Rule-of-Thirds: Evenly dividing your photograph into
three rows and three columns creates the Rule-of-Thirds grid. There will be four
points at which the lines intersect and these intersections arecalled power
points, or points of power. The Rule-of-Thirds compositional guideline suggests
that placing your subject on or near one of the power points will help to produce
a visually pleasing, spatially interesting photograph. I use this rule a lot in
my photography but there are some who believe the Rule-of-Thirds is just another
constraining rule. Study some of your favorite photographs and try using it in
your own work. I bet you find many points of interest will be situated on or
around those power points.
Centering the Subject: One well-known composition guideline
is that we not center our subjects unless doing so enhances the subject or
benefits the composition. Placing a subject in the center of the frame provides
an average view of a subject and robs the scene of interest and aesthetic value.
There are many situations, however, when centering your subject is appropriate
and necessary. Such instances would include a portrait where the subject is
facing the camera, a bird flying directly toward the camera, and most subjects
which are appropriate for a vertical format can usually be centered.
Extreme Subject Placement: I am a big fan of unusual crops and
the extreme placement of a subject in the frame. An example of such an image
would be a panoramic with a bird on the far left looking out across the scene. I
have dreams of being able to create a shot like that some day. Don’t let
the Rule-of-Thirds or spacing guidelines dictate all of your compositions. If an
unusual composition works, go with it!
Additional Objects in the Scene: A thorn in the side of many
nature photographers is the inability to eliminate clutter in their image.
Because we are dealing with nature, we often have no control over the objects
near our subjects. We must learn to deal with these objects in a way that will
not distract from our subject, or even better, enhance the subject and
composition.
When you are dealing with unwanted objects in your viewfinder, there are times
when they compete too much for attention and it’s best to reconsider making
the shot. Other times, all it takes is moving your position until you can find
the most uncluttered shot. At no time will I disturb an animal’s nest or
habitat for the sake of a photograph. I consider this highly unethical behavior
as it can have a negative impact on an animal’s behavior, rituals and
patterns.
Color
Color is one of the most powerful forms of nonverbal communication available
to photographers. Exploring color is like opening the door to a new domain in the
landscape of your photographic journey. It may be foreign to you at first, but
understanding and using color will enable you to speak to your audience in a new
language: a language of feeling and emotion. Feeling through imagery can be
infinitely more powerful than the written or spoken word.
Color and Emotional Response: It is widely known among
painters that different colors trigger different emotional responses in a person.
Although the same is true for photography, there are few photographers who are
aware of this fact. In art school we are taught that reds and oranges can cause
feelings of excitement, warmth, and power in a viewer. Blues can create a sense
of peace, calm and cool, while pastels stir thoughts of innocence and purity.
Color has even been responsible for bringing to mind long forgotten memories for
some people. It is a wise photographer who understands color and how to use it to
extract the desired response from their audience.
Basic Color Terminology: A quick and easy way to increase
your understanding of color is to beef up your vocabulary a bit. Following are
some common terms used to describe the characteristics of color with regard to
photography:
Hue: A color has three defining characteristics: its hue,
value and intensity. The hue of a color is determined by the dominant light
wavelengths that are reflected or emitted from an object. Our eyes and brains
interpret these lightwaves as color and we call these colors hues. The word hue
is often used interchangeably with “color.”
Value: The value of a color is measured by its lightness or
darkness. Think of a value scale as a vertical gradation from black on the bottom
to white on the top. Yellow’s equivalent value of grey would be high on
this scale because yellow is a light color. Indigo blue would be very low on the
scale because it is so dark.
Intensity: the words intensity and saturation are used
interchangeably and refer to the purity or strength of a color.
Tones, Tints and Shades: These are all variations of a hue.
Tints are created by adding white, shades are created by adding black and a tone
is created by adding a middle-tone grey to a color.
Gradations: Color gradations are colors that appear to
change from one to another with smooth, seamless transitions. An excellent
example of a color gradation is a sunset with colors that range from red at the
horizon to dark blue directly overhead.
Analogous Hues: Analogous colors are similar, but separate,
distinguishable colors. For example a meadow scene in spring that has many
different kinds of trees and grasses will have many analogous hues of green.
Monochromatic Hues: Monochromatic photographs are comprised
of various tones, values and intensities of one color or group of closely related
colors.
Color Harmony: Color harmony is achieved when the colors in
a photograph appear visually pleasing together. The best way to learn about color
harmony is visually. Art stores carry books that have color charts and wheels,
value scales and other aids that are helpful in understanding color and its
properties.
Complimentary Colors: On a standard color wheel,
complimentary colors are opposite one another. For example the complimentary
color to orange is blue, for green it’s red, and for yellow, it is
violet.
Neutral Colors: Neutral colors are hues lacking bold color
pigment. Flesh tones, greys, black and white are all considered neutrals.
Contrasting Colors: Colors in a scene will often affect one
another, sometimes positively, and sometimes negatively. Often complimentary
colors, such as blue and orange, will compete for attention if placed next to one
another. Study a few photographs that have a lot of color in them. Try to see
which colors look good together, which ones clash and which ones compete for your
attention.
Color Continuity: Color continuity is achieved when a
dominant color in your scene is distributed throughout the frame, tying it all
together. For example, in a mountain lake landscape you may have blue wildflowers
in the foreground. Perhaps the blue sky reflected off the lake in the middle
ground is the same color as the flowers, which is also the same color of the sky
itself at the top of the photo. This would be considered an image with good color
continuity.
Perception of Warm and Cool Colors
Understanding how a viewer might react to the colors in your photograph can
help you choose the right colors for the job. In a simplified example, pretend
you are on assignment to photograph the fun and festivities at a local beach on
the Fourth of July. If the day turns out to be cloudy, your image will lack warm
hues, giving your photographs an overall cool temperature. You may capture all
the right shots, but the light in your image will be telling a different
story.
In the snapdragon image below, the blue and violet hues give the image a very
cool feeling. Even the white highlights in the petals could be interpreted as
tiny snowflakes by an imaginative soul. The image on the right is glowing with
rich reds and oranges. The warmth of the colors might affect a viewer by bringing
to memory a time when they felt warm, or any number of other emotional
responses.
There are hundreds of books about color and entire courses dedicated to the
study of color theory. The explanations in this series have been simplified and
were chosen because of their relevancy to photography. On a side note, these
terms are often used in the same context in fine art painting as well as other
visual arts that involve the use of color.
So far we have discussed the most basic elements of building a photograph:
using light, vertical and horizontal formats, depth, subject placement,
additional objects in the photograph, and color. In the next article we will
examine weight and balance, lines, space, and perspective. Until then, happy
shooting!
IMAGE INFO:
Pyramid Lake, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, courtesy EJ Peiker
Great Egret on Pond Apple Tree, Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach,
Florida
Whooping Crane, Central Florida
Kohala Coast at Sunset, aerial from helicopter, Hawaii
Snapdragon, Boyce Thompson Arboretum, Superior, Arizona, courtesy EJ
Peiker
Sandhill Cranes, Bosque del Apache, NWR, New Mexico
Several interesting points (though I prefer the golden section to the rule of thirds - the latter is too extreme), but the bit about colour temperature is just plain wrong.
Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, consequently a higher frequency and a higher energy. Blue light is emitted by warmer bodies than red light and a bluish scene therefore has a higher colour temperature (maybe 9000K) than a reddish scene (maybe 6000K).
How we percieve this is a different matter and has more to do with association. A bonfire for instance is very cold compared with the Sun and therefore distinctly red, but it's closer and it warms us when we would otherwise be cold, so we associate the red with warmth.
The Sun just after sunrise and just before sunset appears to emit a very red light (because the blue is scattered away from the direct line to the Sun), so we associate red with the warming Sun particularly when contrasting it with the dark blue sky before sunrise or after sunset.
In the shade on a sunny day, the light is bluish because blue light is scattered more by the sky which lights up the shadows, so we associate blue with shadows and coolness.
There are more effects causing association of red with warmth and blue with the cold (the colour of our skin for instance influenced by our red blood), but the colour temperature is a welldefined term in science and photography dealing with what temperature an object emitting a given spectrum has, and blue is related to higher colour temperatures than red. The confusion seems to be caused mostly by effects of wavelength dependent scattering in the athmosphere, associtions with selectively reflected colours and fire.
Of course this doesn't change the part about what effect the colours have on the viewer, quite the contrary, but it's not the colour temperature that does it.
Thanks Gloria for this interesting article. The only regret is that by the time I finish reading it, I was asking, "Where is the rest of it? I want more!!".
Just as a side note, I think you could make it more explicit that the interpretation of color and its effect on the viewer is dependent on personal experiences. That way there is a clearer boundary between the technicalities of color and its associated aesthetic values.
I'm always a bit sad when I see folks telling others about
"the rule-of-thirds" because to my years of teaching others,
such a guideline doesn't so much encourage more careful
observation in the viewfinder, but rather just replaces
one mindless practice (bullseye shooting) for another
(place your center of interest in one of four spots).
Better, when it come to teaching, to encourage students
to "kill the clutter" -- the kind of practice which by
it's very nature forces the individual to be more obervant
of all things in his or her viewfinder.
Better that a talk about the "rule-of-thirds" be left
for those who are already skillful in removing clutter
from their images -- removing clutter, the trade; the
"rule-of-thirds" but a trick of the trade, as it were.
....And not a genuine service when we teach others a
trick of the trade rather than first teaching the trade
itself.
So to make others more observant (and help them to
be better photographers) more of a service to teach them
to "kill-the-clutter" rather than the "rule-of-thirds."
At least until they are more observant.
I'm sorry to say you got the terminology wrong, though the ideas are there. Physicists, electrical engineers and psychologists (and I would like to think photographers) describe colors in terms of hue, saturation and intensity. You are right about hue. That's the color of the rainbow or spectrum you are designating--red, blue, green, etc. What you call value--the light or darkness--is intensity. A color seen by candle or starlight is not as intense as one in full sunlight. Saturation is not a synonym for intensity. Saturation indicates the purity of the color, that is, how much white is mixed in with it--how "pale" it is. Pastels are not very saturated. Neon is highly saturated.
Although what George Brinton has said would appear to be correct, the terminology used in programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro would seem to indicate that the writers of such programs are using another kind of terminology for "brightness" and "saturation." Would someone who knows both physics and these programs please explain to me what is really being changed on these programs when we adjust "brightness" and "saturation"? Both seem to involve increases in "intensity" in some sense of the word. Even the contrast adjustment on these programs seems to affect color purity and intensity (as perceived by me, not necessarily as scientifically defined). This effect is most striking when the contrast is turned up extremely high. Could someone explain to me in terms of physics what is really happening when we use these three common Photoshop adjustments: brightness, contrast, and saturation? In addition, why do extreme increases in "saturation" and "contrast" on such programs give the distortions that they do?
Ms Hopkins says the photographers should "not center our subjects unless doing so enhances the subject or benefits the composition." Obviously, that is true about ANY subject placement, whether in the center or on the so-called "rule" of thirds.
Gloria, just want to thank you for contributing this article. I certainly found it to be helpful and am walking away with more information about nature photography than I had before. In addition, it's quite clear to me that you took a measure of care to qualify your discussion of "rule of thirds". Somehow, some people seem to miss this. Maybe the mention of "rule of thirds" alone is too unacceptably conventional and should be permanently be excluded from everything associated with photography. (I'm not keen on sarcasm, but somehow am finding it difficult to resist at the moment).
I appreciated your discussion of color. We can use more of it. I personally am curious to learn more about it and to apply the awareness to my picture-taking. I would have like to see several additional visual illustrations of your definitions of the various terminologies dealing with color. Thanks again.
Color order systems (aka color spaces) are linguistic, psychological and mathematical attempts to catalog the physical phenomena of light. It is instructive to search the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST) website: see if you can find a current color standard. NIST appears to have abandoned the work of it's predecessor, the National Bureau of Standards,Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names. See the Virtual Color Museum http://www.colorsystem.com/ for more information on color systems.
All the color systems are cataloging efforts of the physical phenomena, and as such, are only approximations. If you study one, I'd recommend the RGB system, because most electronic devices use three devices for each pixel: a red(magenta) one, a green one and a blue (cyan) one. The three step aproximation of Red, Green and Blue is usually good enough. For printers, which produce paper products that people inspect closely, you'll frequently find more colors used: frequently 4 or 7. It only makes sense: If the demand for quality is high, use a shorter distance between intervals, much like 1/2 stop steps don't give you as much control as 1/3 stop steps. Look at a cereal box, they frequently include samples of all the dyes used on one of the flaps. The human eye uses three color pigments and one black & white pigment.
"Color Temperature" is a physical quantity. The peak wavelength of the electromagnetic energy (light) emitted by a black body is inversely related to the temperature of the body (the sun, light bulbs and anything above absolute zero radiates "black body" electromagnetic energy). Wien's Law and Stephan's Law govern. Check out http://astro.gmu.edu/classes/a10594/notes/l09/l09s031.html
To discuss the color temperature of a photograph is, as Mr. Skovgaard says, just plain wrong.
Lighting systems rely on the color temperature of their respective black body emitters (the sun, xenon, tungsten, etc). Photographers should be aware of how their media will record the light from various emitters (sun, flash, flourescent, sodium, halogen, tungsten, shaded sun, sun under water, etc) as reflected by their subjects (apples, skin, retinas, etc) because the response of every media changes with the color temperature of the emitter AND the reflectance of the subject. Additional concerns include spatial and temporal responses of the media and spatial distortions caused by the lens. In a perfect world, you'd also consider the reflectance of your subject, the transmissivity of the lens and all other media through which the light must pass (filters, air, pollution, etc). You'd consider every light source, whether it is reflected light, emitting black body radiation, emitting single wavelenth atomic emissions ('limelight') or emitting single wavelength, coherent emissions (lasers). You'd consider the angle of every light source, it's brightness, it's size (what, your light source isn't a mathematical point?)
With all those variables, the ability of photographers and companies to collaborate and so develop the laser-guided camera, media, lighting, software, lens and composition solutions to the fantastically complex problems of photography(sports, portraiture, nature, B&W portraiture, etc) seems admirable.
As my brother the art major once told me (the physics major): "You have to know the rules before you can break them. Otherwise you're a klutz."
3) "Intensity" has nothing to do with bright or dark. It is used interchangeably with "saturation" and refers to color strength and purity. They are used interchangeably in both painting and photography.
Of these things I am positive.
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As to "color temperature." Thanks for the detailed discussion.
It should be remembered that often terms are used differently by different artists. For example, painters and many photographers use "color temperature" not knowing a thing about science, the earth or actual temperatures. They're thinking "warm" or "cool" colors. This is widely used and understood terminology in the art world and it has been for a very long time.
There are some who talk about "color temperature" in more literal and factual terms such as those above.
