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Principles of Design: Space

Progressing now from the elements of design, we're going talk about the principles of design so illusion of space of motion scale, proportion focal point balance rhythm in unity ok, quickly going to it because I have the breakdown slide, which is richer so illusion of space that's first up illusion emotion right weaken we can show motion we could take motion out of our photographs scale proportion we talked about the rule of thirds, but what if we could kind of lay out an image in a way that went beyond the rule of thirds wasn't didn't need to be as fixated on a rule, so to speak balance think a symmetry and asymmetry focal point and rhythm in unity okay so's principal space to kind of viewpoints when we're talking about space, we've got internal viewpoint, an external viewpoint, external viewpoint I guess the best way to think about it is it we're in a building looking out a window we don't really feel like we're connected to the scene we don't necessarily feel like we're disconnected...

to the scene. We just are kind of seeing what's going on we don't feel like we can interact with the fishermen in the water, but we see the scene so we're viewing it externally right and between the viewpoints there's no right or wrong way of thinking about it it's just a different way of kind of illustrating a photograph right don't we feel like we're in a cabin right now here's the window there the mountains out in the distance we don't feel like we can be part of that hillside there in the foreground, right? So external viewpoint we're outside viewers here same here the gross mass of the mountains, the hill, the ridge line of the trees etcetera we don't feel like we can interact with anything directly so it's more about looking at the environment from kind of an outsider's perspective right here we're kind of way feel a little bit more like we're part of the scene because ron water it's not terra firma for us so I almost feel like we're on a boat and we almost feel like we are connected to that scenario just because of the water element right and with the horses were almost in there but not really okay, so internal viewpoint so now we're getting in the scene we feel like we're standing underneath this tree and we feel like we're going to get run over by him okay? It's more tangible we feel like we're on the bridge, right? Remember I said, you know, fifteen ways to sunday can we shot it from the downside? Now what about if we get a pawn here and we shoot it from a different way? No team I've got shots from walking I mean that's just walking away from me so wide angle and I'm standing on the edge of the bridge we've immediately just funnel right down the pipeline and get what depth into that image feel like we're being covered by the trees here and in fact we kind of are this is in bellingham so if your local you can go do this here we feel like we are the scene because we are the scene you know it's the shadows sun setting behind us all these people are photographing the brown bear out on the horizon how do I change my scene how doe I instead not just shoot a five hundred millimeter shot of a bear grazing in a meadow well I do that by putting a fish eye on and standing there in the crowd watching my shadow body position so you don't really see that I'm holding up a camera right here that's me right but I look like on part of the scene and thus you feel like you're part of the scene hanging out on the fence line this is more monroe and grand teton national park mid day it's pretty close to midday again went black and white route had enough contrast things working I love the texture of the rail of the fence that's decrepit fence and the grass is kind of in the foreground etcetera so getting my camera into that fence making you part of what's going on in that scene so internally internal viewpoint I want you to feel like you're riding the bike running next to like what do we do? I attach the camera to the bike remote trigger you'll see those tomorrow in the gear using pocket wizards uh I set the camera up on the bike with this arm and just have a pedal picking shutter speeds that do things like blur my kind of surrounding environment yet keep her sharp trial and error thing if you don't know how to do it he got an lcd in the back take shots zoom in so it's working okay so within the internal and external viewpoints we also have different shooting perspectives right? We can shoot low we can shoot I level we can shoot ariel so what's the first one let's shoot below let's go to the worm's eye view down low things were gonna happen above us okay? To get the shadowed I did his sat underneath the base of the jump they came ripping off of it composed with some elements that kind of gave me this flowy bluewater effect to the shot he then gets up into the opening bam there's my shot now we saw this with the go pro this morning. Well, this is the actual shot that I took from my camera so the way I did it was I had to go pro mounted on the hot shoe of my camera flash just doing continuous timelapse exposures and then he came off the cliff I'm shooting with a fish I the reason the perspective is so closely related is that okay? Thirty five millimeter fisheye gopro fish I write gopro has such a wide field of view it's very similar officially it does the same kind of effects so I'm simultaneously capturing two different things going on okay and the shot you saw from the gopro obviously we couldn't speed at which it shoots in comparison the twelve frames per second is very different so the one you saw with the go pro is just him and his poll coming out more snow so it was taken after the shot but because I had twelve frames per second with my camera here I got the shot before that shows the color of the goggles thus this becomes the color shot the other one became the black and white shot to make sense teaching a workshop in page arizona one of my students is like oma yoga instructor son has already set still have this very dynamic dramatic sky overhead like get up there on the rocks for me so she's like ok, what do you know? How do you do this yoga stuff? You know, I don't know anything about it at that time no more now but so she's out there doing all of her poses and I've got the whole group kind of gathered around just down low, shooting up on her on standing on some rocks. She's got great balance so I could get her up on iraq and she could do all this stuff pretty cool, right? So just kind of furthering using the tools around me and surrounding me that I find out something like that. Ok, well, we're not mountain biking here, but we're doing something else, okay? We don't need the dog and focus, do we? We get it and it's kind of if we own dogs we know exactly what's going on here, right? That thing is looking my lens making it nasty but what's going on is ping pong bikes garage you know, this is an athlete's garage it's it's like the toy room, right? And they're the girls are playing ping pong. I get down low he's laying down, but as soon as I get down low he looks back and starts coming to me for attention, right? Well, I take the shot. The focus is not him, but I want you to kind of witness the world from his perspective yet I then included him. So you make that connection that's the dog's world, right? So I'm off to the side he actually clips this tree when he comes down but I'm below him so it looks more dynamic and what's crazy is it's a fish I shot so very wide angle it looks really big but it really in reality it's only like ten feet you know? So it's that's another trick you knowing your equipment well fish islands a very wide net very wide focal kind of perspective so you can use that to your advantage so again I love one on one we totally relate to what's going on we relate to it being at the same eye level etcetera, etcetera, there's a very human scale feel all of that to this correct same way I feel like we're part of the meeting right around that same plane is the people that's intentional? Would it look different if I laid down on the floor in front of them and shot with a fish eye and everybody is bowing in? Yes, it would right that's powder that's a powder day we're in the train we're getting on the train you know that's quintessential like what you feel like when you're headed up there to know that you're going to ski really good snow so emotion capturing that emotion, feet hanging out you know, waiting for the other people to show up kind of taking a nap on the bench of the old pickup see love the old pickup it was kind of nasty inside too okay, so what if we could get our cameras up above our subjects? That's pretty cool, different way of looking at it. It looks like we're falling down the mountainside now got my camera up above as he skiing down again. Now we're what are we doing? Got the bird's eye perspective, but we also have vertical lines. We've also got diagonal lines. We've got our element in the place where you wouldn't expect him. It becomes more about what's going on in the environment and he's just kind of passing through. Okay, so you remember the last two shots of the glacier here? We've walking, we've walked like three or four more steps on that ridge line that I showed you in the last shot. We're now looking down on the people waiting for the boat to come back. So I have to walk down this whole thing and go down to where they are to get on the boat, but while they're gathering, I see it happen, you know? And I'm ok, I can make this happen. I can tell us more stories, I want to get you up into the trees. And what if we were the bird hanging out on the branch, seeing this all kind of happened, just looking at a hotel window, and I think santiago so these guys were working? I like the fact that the passer by was like looking through the little window this's like quintessential construction site everybody's. Always like are they doing anything right? So thiss guys like aren't you doing anything on? And I'm looking down like, aren't you guys doing anything? Something hold there again. Can I tell the story? When? How do you? How do you leave? How are you? What are you doing when you go skiing, you know, how does this all work? This is just leaving my garage in in look, connor there's my truck putting my skis on. So how do I set this up? Will amount to camera on him. It's up above his his head, using a fish islands. He walked his job is to just walk out of the garage. My job is to figure out when he's at the edge of the garage. So again, member of the shot with my wife. The point at which there's enough like being cast on him that you see the subject, he's, not completely black. So my job is to time it so that I shoot it. When? He's right there I have my skis in my hand, lifting up the remote is right there in my other hands. Taped up on the roof rack of the truck and all I have to do is press the button to it, but you're never going to see that in a fish eye wide angle shot, right? Because it's too far away, you probably would see him now, because the ones I have now really brave I was losing. So any questions on kind of space and internal viewpoint extra viewpoint with the with I know you have one way you had I guess you had a camera mounted to the biker, what are you mounted like a goat pro? Or, you know, that's a one d x that you're mounting announcing on bike insurance? Yeah, I mean here's the thing she's, not that scene she's not like riding over anything crazy with you see the shots we did, I think you're going to see a shot of this fish, I we remounted and he got like fifty feet of there with the camera on him. So that's a little different scenario, but for that she's just peddling and I'm picking, I'm picking this right shutter speed to make that motion more accentuated in the frame because the camera's not moving it's attached to her anything it's kind of attached to a cz long as the cameras not bouncing it's going to be still right and then background and things that you're going by are going to get blurred so you pick a shutter speed that allows you to be in that zone and it's it's truly agers trial and error you know you are you like having your camera up on an extension pole of you actually getting up in the tree itself and its it's all the above okay, yeah just really depends on what it is, how I can do it if I can do it you know, etcetera, some of street didn't look like they were two healthy and you get up there with a little bit of coming down and busting something yes, yeah, truly but I have climb trees to just get that kind of perspective and those dead trees even though you know they're pretty they look pretty I mean eight inches diameter piece of branch even dead is is a lot stronger than, you know, one hundred eighty pound frame so been okay sometimes I'll grab onto a branches and pulling up and it's like, you know, so I don't trust that kind of stuff, but, um yeah, are you ever attaching the camera to like a mano pod for the high shots in the low shots? Yes, we're tripod uh the shots you saw me this morning skiing I just put, I have a strap on the camera. You guys will see that tomorrow, and I hold it right there. The other hand has the remote, and I'm just holding it out there while making terms. So we did. You do it tons of different ways. Just really try as many variations to get that cameron different positions where, you know it's. Not here, right?