From the course: Introduction to Photography

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Understanding what balance is in an image

Understanding what balance is in an image

From the course: Introduction to Photography

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Understanding what balance is in an image

- So you're out walking around, you've got your camera, you see something you want to shoot, you can point your camera at that thing and take a picture. Or you can put some thought into it and compose a picture, make a picture. In this case Jacob, our director, was walking around and he saw me sitting on this wall and he composed the shot this way. Composition is something that you will study and refine for the rest of your photographic life. I define composition as the process of ordering the things that are in the frame so that they make sense to the viewer. We read photographs just the way that we read text on a page. Our eye moves across the page. As Westerners, you go from left to right. Other cultures maybe photographs in a different direction. And as our eyes move around they are guided by the graphic elements in the frame. They are guided to understand what is the subject and what is the background, in a well composed photograph at least. So there are a lot of different things…

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