Review Digital Camera World 07-25-2013

Digital Camera World

Using focal points in photography: how to get perfect composition every time Jul 24th 2013, 23:01, by jmeyer What's the focal point in your photograph? If you don't know then you'd better make your mind up because until you know, it's going to be very difficult to plan the composition of your pictures effectively. And while photographs may be static snapshots in time, you still need to make room for the implied movement that many subjects suggest. We'll also explain the idea of negative space and how this affects your focal point. To help emphasise the composition and focal points of each image, we’ve used black and white photos for the purposes of this tutorial. Using Focal Points in Photography: focal position Every photograph needs a focal point. This is the object or the area we want the viewer to be looking at. You need to work out what this focal point is before you even press the shutter release, because it's crucial to the whole composition and making the different elements in the scene work together. This is a very basic photographic decision. What's your photograph about? What do you want people to notice or appreciate? If you don't know, you're not thinking like a photographer and you're just going to end up with snapshots rather than pictures you can hang on your wall. And once you've identified this focal point – it might be someone's face, a famous landmark, a summer meadow – there's another fundamental decision to be made: where should you put it in the frame? Our first instinct is usually to put our subject right in the centre, and for some shots this is the only sensible choice. One obvious example is a single, circular bloom. To place this off-centre in a photograph will leave the composition looking unbalanced and contrived. The same applies to portrait shots – if the only thing in the frame is your model's face, the only place to put it is in the middle. But this does seem to contradict the Rule of Thirds (outlined previously), which says subjects should be placed on a horizontal or vertical third rather than dead centre. This is one of those grey areas, which highlights the fact that photographic composition can't be applied like a science. The fact is that for many subjects, the only common-sense decision is to place the subject in the centre, regardless of what the Rule of Thirds might say. In the meantime, we're left with a dilemma. Do we apply the Rule of Thirds or not? Or perhaps we can refine it so it still fits with what we've said about composition… Shots may have more than one focal point. The tractor is the most obvious here, but the lines of the logs also draw you to the cottage. Indeed we can. A single bloom should probably go in the centre of the frame. But if there are other objects in the scene, say another smaller, more distant flower, this is the time to implement the Rule of Thirds. So, we might need to suspend the Rule of Thirds with very simple compositions consisting of a single object, but it still applies when we're arranging a number of different items within the frame. PAGE 1 – Using Focal Points in Photography: focal position PAGE 2 – Using Focal Points in Photography: movement PAGE 3 – Using Focal Points in Photography: breaking the rules PAGE 4 – Using Focal Points in Photography: leading the eye PAGE 5 – Using Focal Points in Photography: negative space PAGE 6 – Using Focal Points in Photography: exposure issues READ MORE How to compose a photograph: see images where you never saw them before How to use a camera: exposure modes made simple 99 common photography problems (and how to solve them) 15 common photography questions from beginners (and how to solve them) The Inverse Square Law: what it means for photographers Jul 24th 2013, 10:15, by jmeyer What is the Inverse Square Law? In photography it really just means the change in the intensity of light as a subject moves closer to or further away from its source. In this quick guide we explain what the inverse square law means for photographers working with flash, and provide a handy table to help you understand the fall-off in illumination. The reach of your flash is governed by a law of physics called the inverse square law. As light travels from your flashgun it doesn't travel in a straight line, but spreads out in a cone shape to cover a wider area but with less intensity. The inverse square law essentially says that for every unit of distance an object is away from your flashgun, the intensity of light it receives is 1/distance2. So if we regard an object a metre away as receiving full power (1/1² = 1), then an object 2 metres away receives 1/2²=1/4 power. At three metres it's 1/3²=1/9 power, and four metres is 1/4²=1/16 power and so on. The upshot is that light output falls off rapidly, so an object very close the flash will be lit much more brightly lit than one just a short distance behind it (as the table below indicates, an object two metres away from the flash only receives 25% of the light of an object one metre away). However, the further the distance from your subjects to the flash the less critical this distance is (so place the same objects the same one metre apart from each other. But five and six metres away from the flash, and they receive virtually the same amount of light – just 1% difference). So if you're photographing a group of subjects, don't get too close. But don't get too far away either: once you get beyond ten metres or so then the flash is so weak that its effect is negligible, no matter how powerful the flashgun. READ MORE What is flash sync? Your flash modes and when to use them (free cheat sheet) Flash photography tips: external flash techniques anyone can understand How camera flash works: free photography cheat sheet Flash compensation: how to get perfectly balanced exposures Flash portraits: creative off-camera lighting techniques you have to try

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