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Elements of Design

Alright, final main segment here, is the Elements of Design. So, if any of you have gone to design classes, you'll know that there are certain elements that you look for in lots of visuals. The first one for us, is the line. The line is, what I consider, a handrail for the eyes. It's something for your eyes to look at and for your eyes to travel around. And so, having a smooth curved line, any sort of line, is something that is just intrinsically interesting to the eyes. And if you could map where your eyes are looking on any particular photograph, they're often gonna be following these lines. Because that's what our eyes just inherently do. And so, any time you have strong distinctive lines that's gonna be a good element in a photograph. When you take those lines and you continue 'em on, you can make a shape out of them. And so, the shapes don't need to have tons of detail, because we can identify things with just the shape. You can't tell a lot of detail about these rocks, here. But ...

you can just see the shapes and you can start to infer a lot of information from them. And so, I could maybe have shot this completely silhouetted and you would have known, "oh, I think I can tell "what that is." And see you don't need a lot of detailed information when you have these shapes. It's a very easy way to read your subject. I thought this was pretty cool. This is Australia Rock. And you'll never guess where it's located. It's in Australia. And it looks like Australia (laughs). And so, perfect matching for shape. And sometimes the negative part of it will become its own shape. And so, these towers are obviously the main part. But the blue sky becomes its own shape, these own triangles unto itself. When you take a shape and you repeat it over and over again you get a pattern. And I would have to say I am guilty of shooting lots and lots of patterns. Pretty much, any time I see a pattern, I think, there is a potential great shot. And that's because our eyes love patterns. It's fascinating seeing patterns. We love to discover patterns, and they are all around us. There're ones that we create; there are natural ones, as well. And so, the idea here is not to photograph as many objects, whatever those happen to be; it's about density and size and proportion in there. And so, don't feel like, "oh, I gotta get "every little one of these in there." No, you just wanna find a nice point of view that shows them to you in relatively dense manner. So, as I say, they're all over the place. Closely related to the pattern, is texture. And, in this case, you're gonna be able to maybe identify more with the subject, as to what it feels like. And if you can see a subject, and you can think about what it feels like, you're now experiencing that photograph on another level, that is kind of unusual. You're bringing up a whole different sense than visual. And so, when I show you this, I know some of you are gonna recognize elephant. And you're gonna recognize that elephant's skin. And you can imagine what that feels like. And that brings a stronger connection between you and that photograph. In Cuba, there's a lot of places with fading paint. And so, we try to limit the use of the word texture. 'Cause everything has texture there. And so, that patina, that old look, has a very fun look to it, photographically. And those smooth rocks, you can imagine how slippery they might be. The paint job on that car, how smooth that it. Now those king penguins have these wonderful, they call 'em bears with beaks and flippers. And they have a certain texture to the fur. And how that texture changes when it rains. It's like a wet fur coat. A very different texture. So texture matters. Finally, color, of course, matters. Looking at this first photograph, here, think about what your eyes look at, and where they return to. 'Cause a lot of the times your eyes will bounce around the photo, but they often return. And they're often gonna return to areas that are different, areas that are brighter, areas that have distinct contrast. But, when you add color into the scheme, that starts changing where your eyes go in a particular photograph. So, color has a very strong impact. Sometimes you wanna have a lot of color, sometimes you don't wanna have any. Depends on the message that you're trying to have in a particular photograph. But looking for areas that are very colorful. Or, one of my favorite things is color matching, finding things that are matching. Her dress, his shoe, his hat, the doors. One color matches another color. Or simplifying the colors down to just a simple set. Just blue and yellow, that's all you see in this photograph. And they're opposite on the color spectrum, which makes them kind of vibrate and a little bit more interesting, which can be really good. So, obviously paying attention to the colors, 'cause you eyes are gonna be attracted to the colors. So you typically don't want really bright, colorful things that are unimportant in your image. And that will hopefully, helpfully, give you some tips on composing your images. So, that is the composition section. So there's a lot of ideas to play with in there. Love it. Any final questions? Final questions about the class in general? Now is a great time to ask them. Lots to process. Yes. I just have a question. Living here in Seattle, we have a lot of wonderful, beautiful art walls. When you want to take a photo of a person in front of those walls, do you recommend that they go with just quiet colors? Bright colors? Pick one of the colors from the wall and go with that? Or go neutral. I think it depends totally on the artwork. Because maybe you have something that's done in black and white, and you want to shoot the whole thing black and white, doesn't matter what color they're wearing. Or, maybe you want that color splash of that person in that red raincoat next to a worn out, faded one. Maybe you want, maybe you have something that's got a bunch of yellow in it and you're gonna wait for that person in that yellow coat to kind of match that color. And so you wanna be thinking about how that matches up. Like the picture of the Cuban boys. I was waiting for the woman in the yellow dress. I didn't get exactly what I wanted, and so, sometimes you gotta take what's really what you get there. And so, I think it's matter of matching what would look good in that situation. Alright, well, have any final thoughts for us John? Let's get going. Alrighty. And final little section for you here. First off, some blatant advertisement. I do teach a number of classes here, at CreativeLive. And so, if you are wanting to dive in deeper, that would be the Fundamentals of Photography. It has a lot of the same topics, just explored more thoroughly. I then have specific classes on travel and nature and landscape, which really get in to the nitty gritty of dealing with those types of work. And then I have a number of lens classes. Cannon and Nikon lenses, in particular. But then I have one general one for everybody else. Sony, Fuji, or if you're just wanting a smaller size chunk of a class. But choosing the right lens is in there. And then the Fast Start for Camera Classes is where I go in and I have 62 classes right now on all the different cameras. And so, if you wanna get into a particular camera and you wanna know what does this button do, and what does that button do, and how do I recommend setting it up, and how do I set the custom functions, and how do I get this camera tailored to the way I want it to work? 'Cause you wanna be the master of your camera. Then those classes will take you through a step by step tutorial of all of what those cameras can do. That's kind of my biggest thing. And, as I mentioned before, in some ways I hate new cameras, 'cause I gotta learn a whole new system. And that's gonna be my best friend for the next several years, so I gotta get everything learned. I wanna know exactly about how it does everything. And so, I've gone through the steps of reading the entire instruction manual, and shooting the camera out in the field, and putting it into nice simple terms so that you can pick up and get going with your camera as fast as possible. So, some final thoughts before you head outside, or head out to the studio, or who knows, to wherever you might wanna shoot photos. My Photo 5 Step. This is kinda the process which I usually do photography. First is subject identification. What is it that I wanna take a photograph of? I don't take photographs because I feel good, or I'm having a good time. I'm like, what is my subject? Because that's what it's gonna come down to in the photo, is, hey, what's the subject? What are you shooting here? Next thing is I'm gonna be figuring out where can I be? Can I be up there? Can I be down here? Can I go over there? Do I have permission to go over there to shoot this photograph? I wanna see all my different possibilities to see what looks best. I'm gonna figure out the camera settings. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO. Get all that tied in, you might say. Next I'm gonna deal with focusing the lens. And then, finally, I'm gonna do the fine tune adjustment with the composition. Now, in some cases, I don't do this in this order. In some cases, I know exactly my composition, and I'll worry about focusing and the other steps later. So you don't have to follow these in this order. But these are the steps that, you know, each one you need to do. And this is the order that it most commonly occurs for me. When you're looking at your photographs, you might be just wondering, is this good or is this not good? And, you know, you need to get into photography. And you need to start learning out what makes a good photograph. And everyone has their own opinions. So, here's mine. There are two overriding themes to good photographs: they're beautiful and they're interesting. And so, I like something that just looks good, but I like something that's really interesting, that has me thinking about what's going on in the photograph. And what's common about these, is you need to have some sort of subject. Now, the subject doesn't have to be much. It could be a flower petal, it could be the blue sky, it could be almost anything. But I wanna be able to identify what the subject is in there. Things that are beautiful are things that are photographed under the right type of light, that are composed in a pleasing manner, and that are captured at the right moment. Things that are interesting are things that are new, that I haven't seen before. Or maybe I've seen them before, but you photographed them in a way that's just a new perspective, I haven't seen it presented like that before. That would be interesting. And finally, not necessarily telling the whole story. Showing something up close. Showing me a detail, not worrying about the whole story in that one individual photograph. So, I think these are all things that can make something interesting. But if you think about photography, in the greater world of art, documentation, and everything else, whether it's writing, or poems, or sculpture, or anything else, the one thing that is most unique to photography is the moment. Because we get to capture visual moments, unlike any other system out there. Where we can share exactly what something looked like at a particular moment in time. And so, I wrote a little piece. And I would like to end with a piece of, a little video montage, not quite video montage, because I'll be speaking this live, here. But this is on the moment, okay? As photographers, we live and die by the moments that come and go. We look at the world to see what we can see. We judge it not for what it is but for what it might be. Wandering the land, in search of good light. What we find intriguing is not all by sight. It is the capturing of a moment that is our endeavor. For only in photography do perfect days last forever. These moments are revealed to those that let go. Free yourself from distractions, and your vision will grow. They say everything has been shot and nothing is unique. View the world through fresh eyes, and all is romance and mystique. For what it is that we search, I cannot always say. When it appears, then most certainly, thy will know the way. One must be primed, and ready to react. For the chaos of the world lives in the abstract. So much as we love capturing these moments of bliss, we equally fear those that we not see or just barely miss. It is in the apprehension of these moments that peek that photography emboldens us to continue to seek. Subjects are chosen by our interest and vision. But it's history and experience that'll determine our precision. The camera is critical, your eyes essential. When it sings to your soul, the moment is exceptional.