TECHNIQUE
All images © Tim Clinch
SMART GUIDE TO PHOTOGRAPHY Images viewed on small screens need extra spice for them to be noticed, and strong diagonals and simple framing devices should be at the top of your creative shopping list. Tim Clinch shares some great ideas.
74 B+W
1 wrote in this column a while ago about adding strength and impact to your mobile photography by using diagonals, and indeed they are a very powerful addition which work every time. The main reason that mobile photography needs added impact is purely because so often our mobile pictures are looked at small, on our phone or on Instagram, rather than printed. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I will never miss the opportunity to urge you all to get some pictures printed. Another very useful trick to add impact and lead your viewer’s eye into your picture is adding a frame. By this I do not mean a physical frame to the picture – you can do this when you have them printed and hang them on your wall. No, I mean compositional
I
2 framing, as in the examples I have chosen here. Framing an image with something surrounding it somehow anchors it and lends a bit of solidity. It can be as simple as shooting through
a doorway, as in the image looking out on to my favourite beach in Europe (picture 1), or the tram in Kyiv, Ukraine, framed by the metalwork of the cafe I was sitting in as it trundled past (picture 2).
THE PICTURES THIS MONTH Hopefully the pictures shown here demonstrate what I discuss in the main text. They were shot on the Costa de la Luz in Cadiz (1); Kyiv, Ukraine (2); the wonderful fish market, designed by Gustave Eiffel (of Tower fame), in Jerez de la Frontera (3); a bodega in Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain (4); at a friend’s house near Seville (5); and the door to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (6).
A PROCESSING TIP I’ve said this before, but as in all our mobile photography, be bold. You can throw a lot more at a mono image than you can at a colour one. Use age-old tricks of the trade such as diagonals and framing, and avoid anything wishy-washy in your B&W processing. As you all know, I rarely venture much further than the mighty Snapseed for my mobile processing needs and always make sure to have a look at the filters in the Black & White processing tool (contrast, bright, dark and so on), as they often do the job perfectly. Oh, and don’t forget to look at the filters in Noir as well.
The other pictures demonstrate what I’m talking about perfectly, the only exception being picture 5, which proves the framing does not have to be square or rectangular to do the job. This lovely little succulent in a round drainpipe in a wall shows that anything that anchors your eye does the trick. Adding strong lines that help your viewer’s eye to enter your picture and add an element of mystery by looking through to another view is nothing new. Indeed, it is something that photographers have been using since the birth of the medium, but, just like using diagonals, they work. The longer I go on through my personal photographic voyage I realise there really is nothing new. It’s all been done before so, as they say: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’
