Video - the Five Rules of Composition

There's a nice little video on the Five Rules of Composition. With minor argument - who says there's only five? What makes them "rules" rather than "guidelines"? It's a very nice little video. Take a look:


VideoJug: Photography: The Rules Of Composition

More Rules: Mergers

Going on about rules, there are a few "rules" that can actually be considered rules - that is, more than guidelines. (Well, I guess you can break them if you are looking for a particular effect.)

Probably one of the funniest effects that you can create, usually accidentally, is a merger. A merger simply refers to the instance where two unrelated objects meet in the image and appear to be joined together.

At the left is a lamp - really a statue in a hotel lobby with a lamp "growing out of its head". This is a deliberate merger in the name of furniture design.

The more usual merger is one like that on the right where there is a mast growing out of the lady's head. In many cases you will see photographs of trees, light poles and stop signs growing out of peoples' heads.

In most cases we don't even see mergers until someone points them out to us. Prior to photoshop and like software, you avoided mergers by carefully watching the backgrounds in the viewfinder before you took the image. Today, many mergers can be removed by using the clone brush in your photo editing program. At the left the mast and the rope or wire have both been removed from the photo.

Rules

There are various "rules" for making good photographs. Now I'm a big follower of rules - my training is as a mathematician and I'm good at programming computers, both of which require the knowledge of and the adherence to various rules and sets of rules. But I've got to wonder sometimes. I was asked to help judge some photographs for a local camera club and happily agreed since it's always good to see what others are doing and give some constructive criticism. One of the other judges nitpicked everything it seemed. And mostly it had to do with "rules".

One of the big rules in photography is the Rule of Thirds. If you divide a photograph into thirds with two vertical lines and two horizontal lines, then the centre of interest should lie on the intersection of a vertical and a horizontal line.

So as you can see in this photo of a boy fishing for carp, he is at the intersection of the right and bottom thirds.


There are various related "rules" that derive from the Rule of Thirds:

• the horizon should never divide the photograph into halves; don't have the horizon in the centre of the photo.
• don't put the subject or centre of interest "dead centre" in the photo.
• don't align verticals down the centre of the photo.
• watch your positioning so that various elements of your photos don't line up one above (or below) the other.
  

The problem I have with rules in photography is that they are really just GUIDELINES! In general, you'll get a better photo if the centre of focus, the subject sits on the intersection of thirds, but not always. Sometimes you can't get that arrangement. Sometimes you don't want that arrangement. But my biggest fear when a photography judge starts invoking rules is that a beginner takes it too much to heart.

In this photo of a "lobster claw" the plant occupies the left two-thirds of the photo. But it works - at least for me and that's what's important. Do YOU like the photo and its arrangement? If you like it then take criticism with a grain of salt. Is it possible to make the photo stronger by moving the centre of interest? In this photo I don't think so because the centre of interest is the whole plant.

In this sunset the horizon is a little crooked - it should be straight! (And I agree on this one - horizons should be horizontal otherwise you get the feeling the water is running out to one side.) But it does lie almost perfectly on the top third.

But the sailboat and the sun both break the "rule". The sailboat is almost dead centre and it is aligned directly under the sun and the sailboat is aligned in the reflection of sunlight in the ocean.

But again, I'm happy with this shot. The reflected sunlight leads you out to the boat and on to the sun as it sets over the Pacific. It works for me. A photo judge may not like it but I don't care!

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (born Andrew Warhola) started as a commercial illustrator and contributed to fashion magazines in the 1950s.

In the 1960s he rose to fame as a pioneer of Pop Art with paintings of American products such as the Campbell soup cans and Coca Cola. He also painted portraits of icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.

He switched to silk screen prints to create "art" of mass-produced items but also to mass produce the art itself.

Two of his most famous silk screens are the images of Che Guevara, the latin american guerrilla revolutionary and film star Marilyn Monroe.

Hand creating this style of image can be done using the techniques described in the colour derivation photos discussed here a while back. But there is a free piece of Windows software that you can use to create your own Warhol-type images.

The link to the trial version of Andy is here and it requires only that you unzip the package onto your hard drive. There is no installation as such. Just double click the executable and it runs.

Use the File - Open dialogue or the Open icon to access your hard disk drive and locate an image to load. If your image is much over 2000 pixels wide, you will be asked if you want to reduce the size; say yes and the final image is about 2000 pixels in its biggest dimension.


Now just click on the Che button and voila - instant Andy Warhol "Che" styling on your photo. You can turn off various colour combinations if you don't like them with the check marks underneath each. If you want to try the "Marilyn" colour styling, click on the Marilyn button. By changing the width and height you can change the number of images across and vertically.


Don't restrict yourself to portraits. This works well with many landscapes as well.


Here is a photo of the Colliseum in Rome give the "Che" treatment.


p.s. The creator of the Andy Warhol Replicator has a much newer more powerful editor available - the Pop Art Studio. My only problem with it is the €49 price tag (about $65) which seems a little pricy for casual use.

Cropping for Effect

Cropping or trimming the edges of your photos is used for more than just ensuring that the store gets your prints right. You can also use cropping to correct your photos or to improve your photos. As you can see with this photo of Kylemore Abbey in Ireland, there is a path with tourists on the left side of the photo and a bald section of sky in the top right. Both are distractions from the main centre of interest. The bald sky in particular is so bright that it will draw your eyes to that corner of the photo and hold them there.

What we need to do is correct those parts of the photo. Since there is a lot of space around the actual photo of the abbey and with the water almost forming a path up to the abbey, we can crop the photo, eliminate the two distracting areas and strengthen the photo all in one step. A sample cropping is shown here.


And is applied. Looking at the resulting photo, you would never know that the distractions have been eliminated.


Don't forget to consider a vertical cropping too. Many photos lend themselves to unorthodox croppings - landscapes are generally considered to be horizontals but sometimes you can create a stronger photo taking or cropping the photo vertically.

Cropping in Picasa

One of the reasons I like Picasa is that it makes a lot of commonplace tasks easy. I generally crop 90% of my photos. Why? Because when I have them printed, I want to control what gets clipped off the edges of my prints. I don't like leaving it to automated machinery which may or may not get it right.

To crop an image in Picasa, double click it to open the editing screen. At the top left are the basic editing tools and at the top of the list is Crop.


Clicking on Crop brings you to another screen - really the left margin has been replaced with the cropping controls. The basic sizes 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 are given and you also have the option of manually cropping - clipping the edges so that the final result is not a standard size.

Once you have chosen the size you want, click-hold-drag the mouse across the image to create a rectangle. Everything inside the rectangle is going to be kept; everything in dark gray is going to be lost. But...and it's a big but...Picasa will never willingly destroy your original photo. You can always restore the original photo and recrop it.


Click on the Preview button and you can see the immediate results of your cropping. After a few seconds you return to the cropping screen. If you like what you see click Apply. More likely, the cropping needs fine tuning. Put your mouse inside the light rectangle and you can drag it around to position it more accurately. Put your mouse on an edge and you can resize the rectangle - keeping the chosen proportions. In this example I've carefully clipped out the power lines at the top left.


When you are happy, click Apply and the image is cropped. Note though that you can click Recrop and start all over again if you want.

Cropping Ratios

When you send your photos to be printed and get them back are you sometimes surprised to discover parts of your photo are missing?

You probably don't realize that the images you print are not necessarily in the same proportions as the images your camera takes.

Many (most?) cameras take a photo which is the same proportions as 35mm which is 3 by 2 written 3x2. Why? Because 35mm photos are really 35mm long by 24mm wide. Dividing both 35 and 24 by 12 gives (almost) 3 and 2. So a 35mm photo has a 3 by 2 ratio.

All 4x6" photos are 3 by 2 because if you divide both 4 and 6 by 2, you get 2 and 3. Now we really don't care if the answer is 2x3 or 3x2 - the difference is really just the difference between the photo being upright (portrait) or sideways (landscape).

The problems start when you print larger than 4x6". Standard print sizes are named for the sizes of paper that are produced. Four by six inch prints are named so because the paper is 4" by 6". Companies like Kodak produce paper in several standard sizes: 4x6", 5x7", 8x10", 11x14", 16x20" and 20x24". There are others but most of use don't use anything much larger. Some sizes of prints are standard because you can fit them onto one of the standard sheets. For example you can fit two 3½x5" prints onto a single sheet of 5x7" paper. And you can fit four 4x5" prints onto a sheet of 8x10" paper.

A 5x7" print means that you have to "crop" or trim part of the photo to make it fit the paper. As you can see in this photo of the Swiss guard, part of the image will be lost when it's printed. Why? Because if you divide 5 by 2½ to bring it down for our 2x3 ratio, the 7 comes down to 2.8. It's too small for the 3 in the 2x3 ratio. A 5x7 is a 2x2.8 ratio.

Likewise if you print an 8x10" print, dividing 8 by 4 to get 2 means that when you divide the 10 by 4 you get 2½ and overall you get a 2x2.5 ratio. As you can see in the image below, more of the top and bottom get clipped in the print.

Now it looks and sounds like a big deal and if your arithmetic isn't too good, the it probably sounds like a lot of gobbelldygook too.

But with two simple "rules" you don't have to worry at all.

First, always take your photos with a little extra room around the edges. This way when you crop your photos you won't lose anything important.

Second, don't let the stores crop your photos - do it yourself. If you use Picasa, you should crop your own photos. Double click a photo to enter the editing routine and choose the Crop button from the Basic tools. There you have the choice of cropping sizes.

AutoStitch

Using AutoStitch to create panoramas is quite simple. The hardest part is taking the sequence of photos. Now this photo of the Pantheon would have been easy to take if only I had that $1000 wide angle lens - but since I don't I took a series of photos working from left to right and making sure that I overlapped in between photos. The recommendation is usually an overlap of 30%. A tripod is also recommended so that all the photos have the same vertical coverage. (I usually just "eyeball" the overlap and I don't usually lug a tripod unless I'm going to a specific shoot.)


Once you have the photos and you know where they are on your hard drive, open AutoStitch. It isn't much to look at but ...


The only thing you might want to change in the Options is the scaling. If you are going to print your photo at more than a 4x6" size, you will want to increase the scaling from 10% to 25% or even 50%. Be warned though that creating the panorama at these scalings will take much longer - time to go get a coffee.

If you have the scaling set, then the File menu - Open lets you select your photos. Be sure to change the view to Thumbnails so that you can see which photos you are choosing. You choose more than one by holding the Control key down as you click on photos. If they are in sequence as they are here, then click on the first and shift-click on the last to pick them all. Once you have selected all the photos, click Open and wait.

Eventually AutoStitch will open a window with the panorama created. The black areas are those for which AutoStitch had no information - I missed them when I took my photo sequence. That's why a tripod is recommended.


But with a little cropping and the addition of a blue sky and clouds borrowed from another photo, I have a very nice photo of the Pantheon, its Obelisk and the little piazza it occupies.

Exposure Correction in Picasa

Although PhotoFiltre gives me more control over exposure control, Picasa will often do the same job with just one button. Double-click your photo to access the editing mode and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Picasa will then do its best guess at correcting your exposure, contrast and colour balance all in one go. And generally it does a good job as you can see here.


But sometimes I don't like the colour correction. It just seems to be a little too much - too much contrast, too much colour saturation, too much colour shift. In Picasa once you've made a correction, all you have to do is use the Undo button to reverse the last corrections. So if the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button isn't lucky for you, Undo it and then try the "Auto Contrast" and the "Auto Colour" buttons. 'Auto Contrast' adjusts the contrast without touching the colour balance. "Auto Colour" takes a best guess at the lighting and adjusts it so that whites come out as whites rather than pale yellows, oranges, blues or greens.

Basic Exposure Correction using Gamma

Gamma is a measure of the brightness and contrast of an image. By adjusting the gamma you can adjust the midtones (those between the brightest and the darkest tones) without damaging details in the highlight and shadow areas. With a program like PhotoFiltre, you can adjust the gamma from the main toolbar. Gamma is symbolized by the capital Greek letter, Γ. Below you can see a view of the Roman skyline before and after gamma correction.

In PhotoFiltre the gamma control is on the main toolbar as shown here. Just clicking it one or two or possibly three times will result in the photo being "lightened". There is some correction in contrast but not much.


I generally find that adjusting just the gamma leaves the image looking "flat", i.e. without sufficient contrast. To correct that (and because I find that I prefer slightly contrasty images), click on the contrast tool two or three times.

Software You Need

I'm a firm believer in not spending money if I don't have to. It's not that I won't but if something free will do the job I need to do, then free is it.

My second belief is that the majority of people are NOT computer oriented. They are ordinary folks who like to take photos of their children, of their grandchildren, of their trips. They want to be able to put their photos on their computer and work with them. They don't want to become computer experts - they just want results. Where do my beliefs originate? In the night school general-interest classes on "Digital Photo Editing" and "Learning to Use Your Digital Camera" that I teach.

When it comes to working with my photos in Windows, my primary tools are:

• Picasa from Google which is a superb tool for organizing your photos on your computer, for simple fixes and simple edits, and especially for creating backups of your photos to CDs or DVDs. I teach many, many people who are lost when it comes to creating backkups and Picasa keeps it simple.

• PhotoFiltre, a French editing program (with an English version). This photo of the Arch of Constantine just outside the Colliseum was corrected for exposure, had the perspective straightened, was colour enhanced, had a canvas filter applied, had the edges "blurred" and was labelled - all in PhotoFiltre in under five minutes!
  
  PhotoFiltre actually comes in two versions - the free one and a more advanced version called PhotoFiltre Studio which sells for a very reasonable 29 Euro. PhotoFiltre Studio supports layers which give far more control to the photo editing process than software that does not use layers but Studio does not implement them at a level that I would feel comfortable recommending it over other software.

• Autostitch which is a graduate school project from University of British Columbia and is my all-time favourite for creating panoramas. The following panorama of Honolulu started life as a series of 7 photos taken in sequence from left to right. Autostitch then took the individual photos, matched them up, blended the edges and created the panoramic composite. Not bad for a free program and a lot easier than using many of the more expensive programs.

Emailing Photos

The problem with email photos is they usually are too large to see in the email. You need to resize them smaller.
In Windows XP this is simple.
First find your photo on your hard disk drive.
Click on it and then click on the "E-mail this file" in the left side menu. If you need to send more than one photo you can click on the first one and then hold the Control key down as you click on the other images. Let the Control key up before you click on "E-mail".


Windows will open a small window usually at the top of the screen which offers to make the pictures smaller.

If you click on the "Show more options" link you can then choose the size of the reduced image.
I generally choose "Small (fits in a 640 by 480 window)". Choose the larger sizes if you want the recipient to be able to make a 4x6" print.

When you click OK your email program will open with the image or images attached.

Pixels, Megapixels and Size OR Why My Email Photos are HUGE!!!

Megapixels - millions of pixels or picture elements. Each pixel is part of the image your camera takes. The millions of them together form a gigantic mosaic to form the image.

The image size really refers to two different concepts:

• the size of the image on a screen or monitor and
• the size of a printed paper photograph

Monitors or computer screens display 72 dots per inch (dpi). So if you want to know how large an image will be on a computer screen, divide both dimensions by 72. For example, suppose you have a digital photo which is 3000 x 2000 pixels or a 6mp image.

3000/72 is about 42 inches and 2000/72 is about 28 inches. So that 6mp image needs a computer screen which is 42 inches wide by 28 inches high.

Did you ever wonder why the photos your friends email you are so big? It's because they are viewing the image on their computer using some program that reduces the picture to a size convenient to the screen. They don't realize the amount of space that image needs on your screen when you view it in an email.

When you go to print a photo either at home or commercially think about dividing by 200 instead of 72. When you print on paper the common value used is 200 dpi for a top quality image. (You may hear 150 or 220 or even 300; it's just different opinions being expressed.)
So that 3000 x 2000 or 6mp image comes out at 15" x 10 ". Now the thing to remember here is that the 15" x 10" represents the LARGEST top quality image you can print. There is no problem at all in printing smaller images - 4x6 inches or 5x6 inches or 8x10 inches or even 11x14 inches. It's when you start getting too much above the 10x15 inch size that you will start noticing that your picture quality suffers.

p.s. You may hear this same discussion with the titles "The Rule of 72" and "The Rule of 200".

Online Photo Album/Gallery - PhotoOnWeb

PhotoOnWeb is a new internet site for your online photo albums. It is a product of VSO Software publisher of VSO PhotoDVD - Photos DVD Slide show software.

It works a little differently than other album sites I've used but I love the results. You download a small program (about 6Mb) and install it. When you run the program you can select to create a new album or open an existing album.
Now select your photos. You can browse your hard drive to find them or you can drag and drop from an open window. Each photo can have its own comments.
Select an album name (which will define the web page name), a description (which will appear on the page) and a template. There are more than 20 templates to choose from: photographic, wedding, model book, holiday, real estate, birthdays, etc. All done? Then Publish your album. Publish connects with the web site. If you are not logged in, you must do so and then the pages are created and uploaded with reasonable speed.

I haven't yet tried hosting the pages on my own ISP web space but they say you can.

It's brand new - I even got to use my name as the login. It's free! There's a 100Mb of storage. And the current version has no ads inserted.
Overall, PhotoOnWeb is very hard to fault!
Take a look at an example I put together of derivations.

Windmill at Mt. Pleasant

I used to do this type of "derivation" using high contrast Kodak B&W litho film (made for the printing industry). Took hours. This was much faster and easier. This type of photo isn't to everyone's liking, but the thing to remember is that you do photography for yourself (unless of course you are photographing someone's wedding, etc.)
If you'd like to see some more of these, take a look at my album at PhotoOnWeb.

Dumpr is a lot of fun!

If you have ever wanted to have people notice your photographs then you would probably like to have them hung in a museum or gallery.
Now you can do just that! Visit Dumpr and you can almost instantly have your photo hung in museum format!
It's really easy too! When you visit Dumpr, you first browse to your photo. It's a good idea to have it resized down to about 800 or 1024 pixels wide. If you have a slower connection, you also want to downsize to improve the upload speed. The finished images are 800x600 pixels so you can get a reasonable 4x6" print from it.



After selecting your image, you choose the museum/gallery format that you prefer by clicking. At the moment there are four options. Once you have selected your image and style, click on the blue Continue button and your photo will be uploaded to their servers.

Once your photo is uploaded you will see it prepared for you. At the top are links to email the photo to your friends, to upload it to your Flickr! account (if you have one) or to save it on your own computer.
As well, you get links to the copy stored on Dumpr's server and a link for your blog. There are also links to attach the photo to your del.icio.us and facebook accounts.

Pixels and Megapixels

What's a megapixel you ask? First, let's just consider a pixel or picture element. A pixel is one of the square "dots" that make up your picture. When you take a picture your camera transfers the contents of a rectangular sensor to the memory card in the camera.
Every rectangle has a height and width. Suppose the camera sensor is 3000 units wide and 2000 units high (where each unit is a pixel). Simple arithmetic gives an area of length x width = 3000 x 2000 = 6,000,000.
That sensor records 6 million pixels. To keep the numbers under control, a megapixel is 1 million pixels. So our 6 million pixel sensor is a 6 megapixel or 6 mp sensor. And that makes the camera a 6 mp camera.