AOP part 16: Triangles and Leading Lines
The technical bit of photography really is the easy bit. The really important part is happening the in the equipment behind the camera - in your head.
I'm talking about composition really. In this image I've asked Maja to keep feet apart and knees together and spread the arms out.
Why? Because I'm creating a strong triangular shape with the frame. A triangle is a very strong compositional shape.
Beyond that, notice how the various lines on the walls tend to direct attention to the Maja at the centre of the frame. Then the A frame around her head concentrates on Maja's face.
Now sometimes this is very, very deliberate. But I have to be honest and say a lot of it is just intuition and experience. What it is not, is accidental.
It basically comes from taking an awful lot of pictures (nearly 2 million!) and reviewing an awful lot of pictures (2 million of my own and goodness knows how many others have taken).
Here I am lying on the floor to get the shot. I can guarantee somewhere I shuffled a couple of inches to achieve a better framing. There might have been small requests to Maja to tip left, or swing right to the light. Even before we'd got that far I had placed the bench at an angle and tipped the chair in the background upside down.
So how do you learn this stuff and develop your style?
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This is an excerpt from "Anatomy of a Photoshoot" which gives a complete breakdown of two days shooting with a full in-depth step by step review of everything that I do.
It is available on Amazon
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