Pattern is the repetition of shapes, lines, colors, or forms. It can either be a random or orderly arrangement of objects in nature or of man-made objects. It may either be a repetition of a single, basic shape or a combination of shapes.
People by their gestures, actions, expressions, and movements, can also create patterns, as in the picture of the girls below, fervently praying, waiting for the announcement of winners in a drama contest.
Sometimes however, a picture can become more effective or interesting if there is a disruption in the pattern of a subject, like in picture below where this girl on the left, front row, takes time out from the field demo practice to say “hello!”
9 Photo Composition Tips (featuring Steve McCurry, 2002 Photographer of the Year, American Photo Magazine); Tip No. 8: Patterns and repetition
Friday, July 13, 2007
Photojournalism (6): Element of pattern
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Photojournalism (5): Elements of tone and contrast
Element of tone
No, we definitely cannot be talking about music here; I am tone deaf, you see. Tone in photography refers to the transition of light to dark within the subject of your photograph. The variations in tones provide us with the visual information enabling us to distinguish one object from another, and to determine a photograph’s quality.
The distribution and variation of light and shadow within the image set the mood of a photograph. A picture with primarily dark tones will convey a somber, dramatic, mysterious mood (as in the picture above of students with hands reaching upwards, towards something or someone).
Light tones, on the other hand, convey to the viewers a cheerful, open and optimistic mood as in this picture of cadets preparing for the fancy drill.
When bright and dark tones are both present, a bold, assertive image will be created like in this picture where the painted faces are pure white and the T-shirts are solid black.
By the way, in the climactic scene of the movie “City Hal,l” Al Pacino playing the role of New York City mayor Joe Pappas, says: “There’s black and there’s white. It’s the grays in between that give us the problems.” He was referring of course to ethics and moral standards (are there such things?) in politics. If he had been referring to black and white photography, he could not have been more wrong.
Good black and white photographs often display what photographers refer to as “full tonal range.” A good picture, in terms of tone, oftentimes exhibit solid blacks, pure whites and varying degrees of grays, like in this picture where the guy on the right obviously has a face only his mother (or Buffy the Vampire Slayer) could love. His fangs are pure white, the background on the upper left hand corner is pure black, while the bags on the foreground exhibit various shades of gray. A picture with only black and white tones would just show the subject’s shape or outline (known as a “silhouette”). The varying shades of gray (dark, light or medium) generally produce a more aesthetically pleasing image.
So you see, “there’s black and there’s white. It’s the grays in between that give us good pictures.”
Element of contrast
Closely related to tone, contrast is the difference between the strongest highlight and the darkest shadow in a photograph. When a picture uses tones at the opposite ends of the tonal range, it is said to have “high contrast.” Photographs with extremely high contrast like in the picture above will lack detail in the burned out highlights (the ground) and in the almost solid black shadows (the desks and the overhanging foliage).
“Low contrast” images on the other hand, have a limited range of tones. When the range between the highlights and the shadows is very low, the resulting pictures will look muddy and dull. Nothing is black and white as the movie “White Man’s Burden” starring John Travolta and Sidney Poitier would say.
You have to keep in mind that the eye sees the world differently from the way film does. While our eyes can distinguish tones in a scene with a brightness range of 1:1000, film can only record a very limited range of brightness. The technique is to squint your eyes while looking at your subject - this will give you a fairly good idea of how the scene will record on film.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Photojournalism (4): Elements of form and texture
Related posts: “Elements of photojournalism” and “Campus news photography” |
Element of form
In the early days of photography, tribesmen from jungles and mountains believed that cameras had the power to steal their soul and imprison them in a piece of paper. But photographs really are just reproductions of what is actually there in reality. The problem oftentimes, however, is that a lot of pictures do not have depth, which makes them look unreal. Here we need the element of form. While shapes are two-dimensional, form provides a third dimension – depth. If you are mathematically oriented, think of it this way; shapes only have the x- and y-axis, while form has the x-, y-, and z-axis.


Note: We will later on discuss the quality and direction of light; enough to say for now that in terms of the direction of light, sidelighting best emphasizes form.
Element of texture

In picture above, my nephew JR poses together with his stuffed toy. He’s cute because he looks like me. Hold it! Let me get that straight. I don’t look like the stuffed toy; I look like JR, okay? okay? You can almost feel the softness of his skin and cheeks, and the furry exterior of that stuffed parrot.

Photographs (with fast lenses and slow film; more on this later) can very accurately and realistically portray textures but this may not always be desirable. In portraits, for example, subjects often want to look years younger than they really are (men!) or more beautiful than they really are (women!).
Oftentimes, photographers have to use soft focus lenses or diffusion filters (and now, Adobe Photoshop and other software) to “alter the textural quality of the image” which is really a euphemism for removing or hiding the subject’s lines, wrinkles, blemishes, warts, etc. Why can’t people be like Oliver Cromwell, England’s protector who beheaded King Charles I? When he was asked by a portrait painter to turn his face sideways, he ordered, “Paint me, warts and all!”
In landscapes or nature photography, however, scenes sometimes look best when the texture of rock formations, trees, etc. stand out. (By the way, Galen Rowell is known as America’s best scenic photographer. Did you know that before he became a photographer, he worked as an auto mechanic? Great career change!)
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