Lecture on PhotoGuidelines

Digital Photography has become one of the most popular leisure activities. One can literally  see its cornucopia like flow on social media sites  like Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. For example, Instagram alone  gets over 5 million image uploads per day. Web images are key to story telling on diverse sites like NYTimes, Sports Illustrated, Apple as well as millions of business and blog sites.

Now more than ever , the challenges of  Web images is to produce not just pleasing but compelling  images to go along with interesting stories. Photo composition guidelines provides the rules of the great image making road. But seeing a good image is an art.

Images from Northumberland Hills  WonderFall of 2012

There are many art and graphic design rules from ancient Greek and Roman times such as the Golden Section or various Fibonacci curves that have influenced artists for hundreds of years. More recently, cognitive psychology has confirmed why the rule of thirds and leading lines work well in photo compositions. But where can one find a set of guidelines or rules for phototaking ?

One favorite source of design insights is the 135 page heavily used tome,Alex White’s The Elements of Graphic Design

. Another often consulted source is Harald Mante’s The Photograph: Composition and Color Design which brings in a strong color & hue orientation to image composition. Finally, discussions with my Father about his color drawing methods confirms some methods and adds design inspiration.

So what I have gathered together in this lecture are  photo-taking guidelines which have accumulated over 3 decades of photo-taking, confirmed and expanded by a number of sources . Many also apply to post-processing photofinishing as well. But these guides are best applied behind the lens – making the taken shot as well composed as possible. Here is the free course:

Tuesday October 8th at Trenton’s Quinte West Library
Multi-Purpose Room 6:30PM to 7:50PM
20 Guidelines to Photo Composition – below is a live summary of the presentation

Now the above  summary slideshow is live, just click to go to the next slide.

Photo Composition is vital to all aspects of Image taking and Web Design. This presentation will underline 20 basic photo composition guidelines which will keep your attention on the image while photo-taking. As well the lecture will show how free online and 3 free PC software tools allow users to sharpen the design of their images dramatically using the guidelines. So in an optional session after the presentation, some of the rules will be applied in  a hands on session using 3  free PC photo editors [available  on a free CD to attendees].