From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Framing

Framing

From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Framing

We've been talking a lot about framing, but we've been referring to framing as the process of framing your shot inside your viewfinder. There is another type of framing, and that's to frame your subject within a compositional element of some kind. We're doing that right now. I'm being framed by this car window because I am sitting here in this old car. Framing is another tool that you have to control the viewer's eye. With a good strong frame on the image, attention is brought more to the subject and the viewer's eye is prevented from wandering off the frame. Now, though the frame is here in front of me in this case, I am still the subject of the image, and there's still a background to the image. The frame is serving simply to keep the viewer's eye under control. When framing is done well, you won't even notice it happening. Consider this shot of a windmill. The windmill is very plainly framed inside this larger, weird geometric shape. The framing object itself is not part of the…

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