The rule of thirds is one of the simplest of photography rules that every student of the subject learns in the initial theoretical stages. It may not be a lot of fun to learn, but it is absolutely necessary to know how to use it and apply it in your photography.
The rule is quite simple – imagine if you could divide your image into thirds vertically and thirds horizontally, much like a tic tac toe grid. Now, the points of intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines are of interest to us. These, it is believed, are the points that the human eye goes to the instant it lays eyes on the image, even in the absence of the grid of course. It would be great then, wouldn’t it, if you could place your subjects within the composition so that they are near the points of intersection?
Check out the image of a man giving a penny to a lame beggar. Both the man and the beggar are perfectly placed, at points of intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines. Now, it is true that with journalistic images such as these, there is hardly any time for the photographer to think of and to apply something like the rule of thirds! However, it is also true that composition is a gift that comes naturally to some while others have to hone it in through practice. Use the rule of thirds when reviewing your images. Once you get an idea of what you need to shoot like, the rule will uncannily start to show up every time you shoot a well-composed image.
If you are shooting in a studio environment, or any pre meditated shoot for that matter, keep the rule of thirds in mind when planning the composition. And do remember, rules are meant to be broken they say, and there are no hard and fast rules in photography or any form of art for that matter. Rock musicians often break the natural flow of chords to create stunning effects, and photographers too can create fascinating pieces of art by applying or purposely breaking the so called rules. However, the key word here becomes control and awareness. Getting an image right by fluke is one thing, but getting it right through planning and execution is so much more fulfilling. That’s what makes a good photographer after all…
Try this simple experiment – take out many of your favorite images and see how the rule of thirds has worked for you. You will no doubt see a trend in your own photography. Maybe you like placing your subjects in the top right intersection. That could be your very own style! Finally, it would be great if you took a few purposeful photographs, applying the rule in some and breaking it in others. We’d love to hear how you managed to apply and break the rule and still come up with good photographs in either case.
Well, you could do it out of a studio as well! If you remember our last article on what makes shadow less lighting, this one would be much easier to understand, so we really suggest you read that before you get into this one.
As was discussed in the article titled ‘What Makes Shadow Less Lighting’, it is pretty simple to understand the difference between hard and soft, diffused light. Let us now learn how one can create diffused light. Usually, in most photographic applications, diffused light creates much more pleasing an atmosphere, and adds a nice touch to the image.
You must have seen studios with white umbrellas over the flash lights. That’s a fine way of creating diffused light. Alternatively, soft boxes of various sizes that fit on to your studio light create almost perfect diffused light. When you want the minimum shadows and the maximum soft effect of the light on your subject, you need to minimize the soft box-subject distance. Try this as a learning experience – use a small model subject under a soft box if it is available to you. Try photographing the subject with various light-subject distances to see the difference this has on your image. Of course you will need to make appropriate changes to exposure, since the intensity of light is greater at lower distances.
Many readers probably do not have their own studio apparatus. Do not be disheartened, you can create diffused lighting with your portable flash unit as well. If you have one with a swiveling head, turn it towards a wall, or bounce it off the ceiling to create a wonderful soft and diffused light with the flash unit. This is how wedding photographers are often able to provide awe-inspiring lighting with only a simple on-camera portable flash gun. If your flash head does not swivel around to point in various directions and/or angles, you could still do something about it. Use a bit of semi transparent paper over the flash head to diffuse the light. Remember to make adequate changes to exposure to compensate for the light loss. Of course, if you have an auto flash, you need have no worries about exposure, as long as you affix the paper over the flash’s ‘eye’ or sensor as well! It is quite simple to create diffused lighting isn’t it? All you need is a bit of creativity.
Here’s what NOT to do to create shadow less lighting with your flash gun…don’t use the flash on camera – straight on. If you have an adequate flash chord extension, you could even place your flash away from the camera, at an angle. That would give true modeling to the subject. It may not be soft lighting, but at least you will avoid the ugly shadow at the back, and give some modeling to your subject at the same time.
Experience with various kinds of paper and semi-transparent material in front of the flash head to get interesting lighting effects…
We see shadows all around us, in nature. The shadows are what help us see three dimensionally. To put that another way, the gradation from light to dark on the surfaces of objects helps us to see depth. We’ve covered that in another article with the example of a circle and a sphere, both represented on two dimensional paper. So, in the absence of shadows we see the world in a sort of two-dimensional way. That is not what shadow less lighting is all about by the way….just so you don’t get confused between the two.
By shadow less lighting, we refer to diffused light that does not cast a sharp shadow. Light that is not diffused, for example the flash light from a compact camera, casts a sharp shadow of the subject on the wall behind. That’s light that is NOT diffused. So what really causes this sharp shadow? Try this simple experiment – for this you will need a room with a bulb as well as a tube light. The bulb could well be a lamp light without a lamp shade. Now, switch on ONLY the bulb and hold your hand a few inches away from it. You see a shadow of your hand on the wall opposite. Next, switch off the bulb and switch on the tube light. Hold your hand near the tube light. No shadow! The bulb light is an example of light that is NOT diffused, and the tube light creates diffused light. The basic difference is – the bulb is a point light source (the light emanates from the filament of the bulb, which is pretty much a point source). The tube light on the other hand, is a diffused light source, meaning light does not emanate from any one point within the tube, but from all points on the surface of the tube, with equal intensity.
When you keep this simple idea of a tube and a bulb light in mind, you increase your control and understanding of diffused light, which is so often used in photography, especially in the studio environment. In reality, the tube light also creates a shadow, but a very soft one when compared to the point light source, the bulb. The shadows created by diffused light are much softer and thereby pleasing to the eyes. However, certain shoots call for the hard light of the bulb, the point light source. These may include a photo shoot that mimics the lighting from a spot light on a stage. So, let us not compartmentalize hard and soft lighting into good and bad categories, but rather get a better understanding on when and where each kind is required, and hone a better control over creating each kind of lighting artificially. In nature of course, the sun’s light is usually diffused by the clouds. However, on clear days when the clouds disappear, one can often see sharp shadows of people and objects, especially when the sun is high up at times like noon.
The camera obscura was a tool used by artists and painters of yesteryear, to accurately recreate the perspectives of a landscape, on paper. This device was very much similar in design to the basic camera. In fact it would be more apt to say that this is what evolved into the camera as we know it. It is a good learning experience to build one for yourself, to see how a lens creates an image.
You will need
A lens
A cardboard box
Semi transparent paper
Step One
Get yourself a lens. In fact you could take one out of an ordinary magnifying glass. Use a cheap one, its all you need. On the cardboard box, make a hole in the center of one of the sides, and affix the lens in it with glue or cello tape. Remove the plane of the box that is opposite to the lens plane. PS – Something like a show box would do fine for this project.
Step Two
You need to work out thefocal length of the lens. Point the lens (fixed in your box) towards a distance light source such as an overhead lamp or bulb. Use semi transparent paper to figure out the focal length of the lens. Do this simply by moving the paper plane towards and away from the lens plane. You would do well to affix the paper onto a cardboard frame of appropriate measurements, for this ‘focusing’ exercise. Fix the paper when the image is clear. You don’t really need to measure the focal length. On the other end, if the focal length of the lens used is already available to you, that would make matters much simpler. Simply fix the paper at a distance of the lens focal length, measured from the lens (lens plane i.e. The ‘front’ of the show box).
The semi transparent paper
Why we use semi-transparent paper is to allow a bit of light to pass through it. If this wasn’t the case, you would not be able to see the image from behind the camera obscura. Ground glass would be the most suitable material. However, for this simple home project you could use tracing paper, or even ordinary paper that has been coated with any variety of oil to make it semi-transparent.
The Learnings
Use the camera obscura to learn how a lens makes an image. Most people are surprised to see an upside down and mirrored image on paper, but that is exactly how your film or sensor sees it. When you shoot film, the mirror image is simply reversed during printing, and digital cameras have the inbuilt electronics to make the swap. However, high end view cameras require one to work with inverted images. For those about to start shooting large format, using a camera obscura can train the eyes to compose with inverted images. Use different ‘aperures’ of the lens by attaching cardboard rings to its surface. You’ll soon know how aperture affects depth of field and exposure.
A photomontage is the result you get when you use two or more images to make one composite result image. Like almost everything else in today’s world, there are two ways to make a photo montage – the old fashioned ‘manual’ method, and the digital one.
The art of photo manipulation can be traced back to the initial years of photo process discoveries. However, photo montages were first made around the time of the First World War. At this time, montages were made using the double exposure techniques, and by placing objects on contact print machines. People also found it very amusing to make postcards of different heads on different bodies! In today’s world, the most common place photo montages we see are on cinema posters. Today, montages are made on computers using Photoshop, all over the world. You could make your own montages. Maybe you have a few family images you would want to put into one single frame…the key to an acceptable montage, at least by today’s standards, is to seamlessly add images to the frame. Meaning, the images should NOT look like they’ve been ‘cut’ and ‘paste’ from elsewhere. Let us go ahead and try and make a simple photo montage of just two images.
First, decide on the print size of your final image. We made our montage of 6 by 8 inch size. Open Photoshop. Open a new file under FILE-NEW. Enter the relevant parameters of resolution and width and heighton the dialogue box that pops up. Remember, you need to set resolution (DPI) to 300 for print, and 72 for web usage. Next, select the image that you would like to use for the montage. We open the two images that we need, which gives us three image boxes on our work space – 2 photographs, and one canvas for the final image.
Next, we cut out the areas of interest from both root images, and paste them into our final image canvas area. Instead of using accurate selection tools such as the pen tool, we suggest you make simple, basic selections using something like the lasso tool. Making montages is not very hard work! Just make a basic selection outline with one motion of the mouse, and then feather the selection to something like 50 radius on a 4 by 6 300 dpi root file. If that confuses you, no sweat…simply experiment with various feather densities until you are able to get a good fade-out affect when you paste the copied image into the canvas. To recap, we
Select an outline
Feather
Copy-Paste into the new canvas
Do this for both (or however many images you are using) image.
We took things one step further by converting the entire image to black and white and then adding the brownish sepia touch to it (refer to our article on sepia toning to learn how you could do this).
One of the first things we notice about an image is its sharpness level. Sharpness is associated with the quality of lens, the aperture used and critically, the point of focus. The more accurately you have focused on the subject, the better will be the overall sharpness in the image. Ideally sharpness is something that needs to be taken care of at the shooting stage and not the post production stage. If certain information is missing in the raw file from the camera, nothing on computer can mimic it. However, we definitely can increase the apparent sharpness of images that are not of very low quality in the first place. Do not use the techniques mentioned in this article as a rescue tool when you have made a boo boo in the shooting stage. Rather, use it as a touch up before final presentation of your images. Again, there is nothing that can replace a quality lens, the right aperture or the critical point of focus. Alright, lets get down to the photoshop bit -
Check out the two image above. The second one appears much sharper than the first, if you look closely. Let us learn how to do this. As usual, open up the image in Photoshop using FILE-OPEN. Once the image is opened, go to the filters menu and choose SHARPEN, and further choose UNSHARP MASK in the sub menu. Here you will be presented with three options.
Well, once you have the Unsharp mask options in front of you, you can begin sharpening the image. The first option, AMOUNT obviously controls the amount of sharpening that is applied to the picture. Instead of beginning with this, we suggest you start with the second control option of RADIUS. This effects the radius of pixels that are effected with the sharpening procedure. The levels of sharpening that you apply – the levels of the 3 tools you see in front of you, will vary depending on the resolution of the image, as with most Photoshop tools. The larger the dimensions of the image, for example, the larger will be the required pixel radius for sharpening. When you alter the variables in the sliding bars, you resulting effects will simultaneously be visible in the opened image. Experiment with radius and amount until you reach the desired effect. Beware-do not sharpen the image to such an extent that it is obvious to the naked eye – you begin to see high contrasts when you over-sharpen, and this is to be avoided at all times. The 3rd and final tool on the Unsharp mask palette is the THRESHOLD tool. Use this to soften the sharpening effect if it is overly obvious after you’ve adjusted the first 2 sliding bars. We usually leave this alone and work with just the first 2 options of amount and radius.
You could use the SHARPEN EDGES tool under the SHARPEN menu to sharpen only the outlines of the subject. However, the technique mentioned above will give you much more acceptable and natural results.
Photographing events and concerts of people that you admire and love is an exciting kind of photographic experience. Why, some even get so lucky as to have traveling jobs photographing their favorite bands and rock stars. We can’t promise you that you’ll land your dream job. But we CAN show you how to get better at photographing live concerts.
Use a High ISO
When photographing live shows, the best way you can capture the atmosphere of the moment is to use the existing lighting. Stage decorators and technicians go to great lengths to organize impressive stage lighting, probably coordinated with sound effects. It would be a pity to zap all that creativity away by using a fill flash or on-camera flash. So turn off your flash and turn up the ISO! Trust us; it’s worth the extra bit of grain at ISO 1600, than to have flat lit concert images that look like they’ve been taken by an amateur. While we do agree that lower ISO levels give the best quality, shooting concerts is more about getting the right timing than getting a high quality picture of a static moment…
Turn off the AF
Any auto focus mechanism requires a certain amount of minimum light level for it to work effectively. In concerts where the lights often flash, such as rock shows and dance events, this becomes difficult. The camera’s auto focus mechanism simply does not have the capability to focus when the lights are flashing on and off and varying in intensity as well. No camera in today’s market would be able to lock focus in such circumstances. This is why you could get off-focus images in low light conditions. The answer of course lies in switching the focus to Manual Focus. Many compacts apart from DSLRs of course, offer the manual focus feature. To make things even better, use as small an aperture as possible, so the depth of field is greatest. Again, read that as very high ISO levels to start with (out first tip).
Work to the music!
Say you’ve fired a few test shots in lighting similar to the stage at its brightest…and worked out an acceptable aperture-shutter aped-ISO combination…you are at the concert and ready to fire…how do you get your exposures spot on, how do you time your shots when the lights are constantly turning themselves on and off to the sound of music? Well…simple. Listen to the music! With a little bit of effort, you will quickly get into the groove of the music and start getting ‘in tune’ with it. Expect the lights to go brighter when the drum solo is approaching…for a shoot like this, it would be great if you already know the songs that are going to be played by the band on stage. One quickly realizes that it is very fulfilling to be able to shoot in rhythm to the music. You will probably walk away with the best pictures of the day, if you use these three simple tips to their best applicability.
Have you ever heard of the technique called ‘Painting With Light’ ? It is a classic photo technique, and you will be happy to know – requires little other than a camera and a prop. The word ‘photography’ literally means ‘a writing in light’ (photos + graph in Latin). The technique you are about to learn will show you exactly how this is so true. You will only need a camera capable of taking time exposures (the B setting). In fact the compact camera that we used to make this image is a Olympus C5000Z, which in fact does not support time exposures, but does however feature a slow shutter speed of 16 sec, which is adequate to at least learn this effect and use it to get some exciting results. Lets begin!
You will need a camera, a sturdy tripod, a still life subject to photograph, and a hand-held battery operated torch. The torch could simply be the ordinary flash lights (as in the UK usage) you probably already own…we used a miniature torch powered by a single cell. In fact it was a key chain light, and the light is emitted by a single bright LED (Light Emitting Diode). What you REALLY need to understand is something basic about photography – the areas where there is light are ‘exposed’ on the image, and those that do not receive light remain unexposed or underexposed. If you were to leave your camera shutter ‘open’ in a totally darkened room, the sensor (or film) wouldn’t register a thing on it, even if you used a time exposure of 8sec, 16 sec or even a minute or more. However, if you use a torch to expose certain areas of the subject during this time frame, ONLY those areas would appear in the photograph, since everything else would remain underexposed or not exposed at all!
Set up your camera on a tripod, and totally darken the room. We used a model of an engine for our shoot, as is evident from the image. We wanted the front of the engine lit up, and a gradual fade out towards the lower and rear regions. For this, we first shone the torch for a few seconds from the front of the engine, making sure the light source remained outside the frame of composition at all times…then, we quickly moved the torch around the top of the engine to create a unique effect. The torch was aimed directly at the camera during this stage , BUT COVERED WITH A FINGER, so as not to allow flare. The redness that you see on the light trail is thanks to the glow of the blood in the fingertip as the light shines through!
We used f/8, ISO80 and a shutter speed (not really affecting exposure) of 16 seconds, for this image. Experiment with different light sources, and incident (the light source within the composed frame) and reflected (the torch focused on the subject from outside the composition area) to get unique results every time!
Now that you’ve learnt what sound photography is all about (PART I), you are ready to take your first few sound photographs. You will need -
A Camera with the capability of long exposures, preferably a T option.
2. The sound switch mentioned in the first article in this series
A flash unit with connector cable
The props – in this case, a glass of water and a few ice cubes
The most important stage in all studio photographs is the initial set-up stage. You get the set-up wrong, and theres no chance you will get a decent photograph at the end of the day. To set up the sound trigerred splash photo, lets start with the lighting. Keep the glass of water stationary with a black background. Make sure there is enough distance between the glass and the background, to get a totally dark black background on your image.
Now, place a light behind the glass, in between the glass and background. Place it so that it is lower than the table on which you’ve kept the glass, to avoid lens flare. Focus the flash towards the glass so no light falls on the background, fire a test shot to see if the lighting is ok – and if it is, you are ready to go to the next step.
You will be dropping an ice cube into the water, to let off the sound switch with the ‘plonk’ sound made by the ice as it hits the water/glass edges. Since this really isn’t a loud sound, you will need to ensure the microphone gets all the sound it can from the glass. It is great to connect the mike to a longer cable, to the circuit. That way you can place it next to or even under the glass, if the glass doesn’t topple over…now the switch should get triggered by the slightest sound in the glass. Try it out by gently tapping the glass with a fork. If it fires, you are ready to roll. If it doesn’t, check the position of the microphone and all the connections (flash to circuit and mike to circuit). Make sure the flash is ON!
Next, we set the camera to time exposure, and use the same aperture that you had for the trial shot. Remember, the shutter speed wont matter since you are going to darken the room. Go ahead and darken the room now. Fire the shutter. Drop the ice cube in the water. The flash should fire with the sound of the ice striking the surface of water. Once this is done, close the shutter. Now, check out the results! You may need to shoot a few images before you get the right splash effect…
We’ve just learnt a technique that allows you to shoot splash images with a cost-effective set-up, without an expensive strobe unit..
Did you know that you can synchronize your photography with a sound operated switch? This has many applications – some that are fun, some that are for scientific uses and some that find their applications in advertising photography. It is very interesting, and at the very least – something that you would like to try your hand at, just for the sake of the challenge. This project however, requires you to have at least a basic understanding of electronics if you would like to construct the apparatus required your self. On the other hand, you could always have it made at an electronics outlet or even but a ready made sound switch from something like Radio Shack (which would obviously cost you a bit more). Do keep in mind that this project is harder than anything we’ve covered so far, and is aimed at the advanced amateurs and professional photographers.
The Principle Behind Sound Photography
Have you ever considered the factors that influence your lighting when using a flash unit? Well, the main light source is of course the flash unit itself. It is true that when you use a slowish shutter speed to get a ‘mixed lighting effect’, ambient light does come into the picture. But, when you use a high shutter speed, say for example the flash sync speed of the camera, it is nothing but the flash that has a major effect on your photograph. If you are shooting in a darkened environment, or at night in the outdoors, it is solely the flash that will effect your lighting and nothing else, whatever the shutter speed, even if it is something as slow as 4 seconds or above. When you consider the fact that the duration of flash is much much shorter than the highest shutter speed on most cameras, it becomes quite obvious that this short burst of light can freeze a high speed action quite effectively. If the high speed action is accompanied with a burst of sound (for example, a firecracker exploding, a balloon bursting or an ice cube falling into a glass), the flash can be triggered using a sound switch; to capture the ‘decisive moment’ when the action is at its peak.Let us look at the construction of the switch…
The Sound Switch
This trigger was constructed using a DIY ‘clap switch’ circuit (readily available with hobbyists). If you are making it your self, do mention at the hobby store that you intend to use it as a trigger and not as a power output circuit. Alternatively, you can get readily available sound triggers dedicate to photographic use, but they would cost you a bit more. In any case, the apparatus would have a microphone one one ‘end’, and a flash connection socket at the other. If your flash unit does not provide an output cable, you will need to invest in a hot shoe adapter and a connecting cable. Connect the flash to the circuit and test it by clapping your hands. If everything is as it should be, the flash should fire when you clap your hands!
