Practicing Graphic Design

PracticingGraphic Design

Part 1

Ultimately, successful compositions come down to graphic design. And good graphic design is nothing more than attractive lines in a pleasing arrangement. This applies to ‘art photography’. Pictures with powerful emotional content, such as war imagery, pictures involving poverty, disasters, crime, etc. are assessed differently. Graphic design in those cases takes a second place to the emotions evoked by the subject matter. However, if the emotionally charged image also has strong graphics like the famous picture of the flag raising on Iwo Jima in World War II, then the photograph becomes a classic.

Many photographers struggle with composition. It just doesn’t come easy to them. So, this article is the first in a three part series to help those of you who fall into this category. My goal is to give you visual guidelines so you can identify good graphic design and, therefore, good composition when you are out shooting. The world is a compositional mess. As a photographer, you must make artistic sense of it. We are constrained by the tools we have -- our lenses -- because they don’t reproduce what our eyes see. They come close, but with our eye-brain combination, we never see shallow depth of field, telephoto compression, and wide angle distortion.

This first challenge, then, is to ‘think as your

lenses see.’ Before you even raise the camera to your eyes, try to previsualize how a wide angle lens interprets the scene and how a telephoto lens does the same. This is the first step in working toward good composition.

I begin this series with the easiest type of graphic images to recognize and photograph: Architectural detail. Even if your passion in photography is landscapes, birds in flight, people, fashion, macro, or something else, take the time to identify and photograph architectural details in homes, highrises, and commercial buildings. Not all architecture has photographic potential, of course, but if you start looking, you’ll start to see interesting designs.

What you should look for

1) Reflections in mirrored buildings like the one I captured in Chicago, below. 2) Pronounced diagonal lines like the stairs in a home in Cape Town, South Africa on the next page.

3) Repeating shapes like the elegant lines in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta on the previous page and the columns of the Plaza de Espana in Seville, Spain, on page 12.

4) Juxtapositions of different kinds of textures like in the shot of modern buildings in Chicago at the bottom of page 13.

5) Bold angles that make a compelling visual statement like the upward perspective on highrise buildings in downtown Los Angeles at the bottom of the next page.

6) Door and window designs such as the image I captured in a small village in County Mayo, Ireland, at the top of page 13.

The photography

Let me offer you a few photographic guidelines I use when capturing architectural details. This is subjective, of course, and other photo instructors may disagree with my opinions. However, if you like my style of photography, these guidelines will help you capture similar images strong in graphic design.

First, notice that all of the images in this article are sharp throughout. I believe that architecture photography requires complete depth of fied in virtually all instances. I can’t think of an example or an exception where portions of a building are soft due to shallow DOF and the image looks good. I find the out of focus areas to be visually annoying. I want to see detail in those parts of the picture that are out of focus, but it’s not possible. Therefore, I direct my attention to creating complete depth of field and make sure the images are sharp from the immediate foreground to the distant background. In some compositions, like the shot of the yellow windows and red bench on page 13, a small lens aperture isn’t necessary. All of the elements in this image are

essentially on the same plane. Therefore, any lens aperture will make the wall, the windows, the flower basket, and the bench sharp. In this instance, I’d use f/8 because it is considered to be the sharpest lens aperture.

In a shot like the one above in which I used a telephoto lens and the camera-to-foreground distance was short, a small lens aperture was necessary to insure everything was sharp. In this case, I used f/16 with a 100mm focal length.

Dead center

When photographing symmetrical architectural subjects like the Vermont home at right, it’s important to stand dead center on the structure when you take the picture. This underscores the symmetry and balance of the subject. If you are even a few inches off center, the image will be skewed and, as a result, the horizontal and vertical lines of the building will not be parallel with the horizontal and vertical sides of the frame.

Telephotos vs Wide angles

Picture taking with wide angle lenses is more

challenging than with telephoto lenses. Wide angle compositions often require you to consider both a foreground and a background, and they have to work together to make a strong image.

An example of this is seen in the shot on the next page taken in Chicago where the lamppost and the skyscrapers are complimentary to each other. Finding the right foreground isn’t always possible. There might not be a foreground available, but when using a wide angle lens, the first thing I look for is a foreground.

Telephoto lenses, on the other hand, allow you to select a portion of the whole scene or subject and make a graphic shot often without context, such as a design that’s artistically pleasing or that draws the eye because of its complexity, texture, or intrinsic beauty. The three buildings below that come together in an intriguing way are an example.

If you have a tough time finding good compositions, look for architectural detail with a telephoto lens. I think this may help you with all the aspects that go into making good composition -- design, balance, symmetry, repeating shapes, color, visually compelling patterns, and light.

Architecture can be photographed in every type of outdoor weather and lighting condition: Sunrise/sunset, overcast, midday sunlight, backlighting, and even when it’s raining. There is a caveat, though. On overcast days, or when direct sunlight is behind the buildings, the sky will typically become overexposed or even blown out (become solid white with no texture or detail) when you expose correctly for the architecture.

Usually, you don’t want a bland or blown out sky in the background. There are two solutions to prevent this. First, use HDR so the entire frame is exposed correctly (if the sky has detail worth seeing). Second, replace the sky in Photoshop using the Edit > sky replacement pulldown menu command. For the shot of the Trump Tower, below, and Ogrodzieniec Castle in Poland at upper right, I replaced the sky. Notice I used two different types of skies. For the highrises in Chicago which were photographed under a clear, blue (but cloudless) sky, I used a unique cloud pattern against blue with the sun situated on the right side of the frame because this represents the direction of light. The buildings are lit from the right side, so it makes perfect sense for the sun to be in that position. For the castle, which was captured under a white sky, I used a shot of dense clouds because this kind of weather condition would create soft light. §

BEST of SOUTHERN NATURE

April 1 - 6, 2023