This image illustrates several examples of contrast

[Editors Note: This article concludes our weeklong series on composition by Rob Knight. Wo hope you enjoyed it, and if you have ideas for a weeklong series of articles, we'd love to hear about it. Click on the "Contact Us" button at the top of the page to send us an email.]

I’m sure you can find a few hundred articles about how to add contrast to your images in Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. That is to adjust the degree of difference between the tones in your image. The contrast I’m referring to is between different elements in your photo. Look for elements that are strikingly different from one another to add tension and interest to your composition.

A basic example of this would be a person dressed in black against a white background. The difference between the foreground and the background highlights the subject and makes it stand out from the background. As in previous articles, the fun begins when you think beyond the obvious.

Train yourself to think about other kinds of contrast. Soft/hard, rough/smooth, new/old, straight/curved, or large/small, just to name a few. You can often find multiple forms of contrast in a single frame. In the photo above, the organic lines of the vine contrast the straight lines of the staircase behind it. The bright colors of the flowers and vine also contrast the neutral colors of the background.

Thanks for joining me for composition week! Most photographs have a combination of the “rules” I talked about this week, so don’t get too hung up on one or the other. Spend a little time with each one and you’ll not only be making better photos, but you’ll know WHY your photos are better!

This shot is all about the flower pattern and the texture of the wood

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article every day, and continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

Another great way to look beyond the obvious is to shoot patterns and textures. There are many examples of patterns that you probably walk past everyday. The row of light poles along a city street or the windows of a high-rise building are opportunities for interesting photo compositions.

The patterns found in nature are nearly endless. Look for patterns in trees, from the veins in a leaf to the forest itself. The animal kingdom has patterns like bird feathers, snake skin, cow spots, the list goes on and on. Try to make a photo that highlights the pattern more than the animal.

Like pattern, texture is everywhere. Concrete, brick, woodgrain, all can make interesting photos. This is another great use for your macro lens. When you are shooting to show texture you should be conscious of your light. Side light does the best job of highlighting texture and showing depth.

Detail of the EMP/SFM, Seattle, WA

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article every day, and continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

Try making photographs that are not so literal. Instead of looking for THINGS to photograph, look for abstract shapes and designs. Isolate small pieces of a large subject and see what you can come up with. It’s fun to make a photo of a subject that everyone has seen a thousand times, but shoot it so that people ask, “what IS that?”.

Get out your macro lens and practice finding pictures within pictures. You can probably spend hours shooting in your back yard this way. Interesting shadows are also good for shape and form shots. Look for unique designs and compositions when the shadows are long at the beginning and the end of the day.

Silhouettes are a good example of a composition based on shape. The challenge is to capture the subject so that the viewer can recognize it by its’ shape alone.

The barn and silos give this photo a sense of scale

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article every day, and continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

In simple terms, a photograph is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional world. You can judge distance and size with your eyes quite easily and without thinking about it. These qualities are only apparent in a photograph through the relationship between the subject and its‘ surroundings. It is our challenge as photographers to create a sense of scale and depth in our photos by how we arrange the elements in our viewfinders.

Scale is easily shown by including an element with a familiar size in your frame. When there is a person in your photo, the viewer can easily judge the size of the other elements in the frame because he knows how big a person is. Including the barn and silos in the photo of the farm above helps to give the scene a sense of scale. Even if you don’t know exactly how big a barn and corn silos are, you know that if they look small in the picture the farm must be huge by comparison.

The strong foreground elements draw the viewer into this image

Creating depth is very important in landscape photography. This is done by choosing an interesting foreground that leads the viewer into an interesting middle-ground, that finally leads to the beautiful background. A strong foreground element draws the viewer into the scene, and the main subject is often in the middle-ground or background. David Muench employs these techniques to great effect. Be sure to use a wide-angle lens to maximize the sense of depth. Graduated neutral density filters or HDR techniques are required in many scenes to capture the wide dynamic rage between foreground and background elements, as the light falling on each my be quite different.

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article every day, and continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

This composition technique is another way to draw your viewer’s eye to your subject. The idea is to use an element or elements within your image to frame your main subject.

Simple examples of this technique are shooting your subject through a window, or shooting your subject’s reflection in a mirror. That’s the easy stuff, but there are lots of creative frames you can employ.

Trees can make good frames by using their vertical trunks and horizontal branches. If you’re shooting in a crowd, try using other people to frame your subject. This will also help to give your photo a sense of context. If you’re shooting a landscape, look for foreground elements you can use to frame your middle-ground and background. Framing elements around the edges of your photo can help to keep the viewer’s eye from wandering out of your picture.

A strong S-curve leads you into this frame

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article every day continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

Lines are a very important part of visual communication. Drawings, paintings, and even letters are made of lines. There a lot of ways you can use lines in your photographic compositions.

You can use lines literally as graphic elements. An S-curve is a popular way to use a line as a graphic element. A landscape shot of a forest is made up of vertical lines. A silhouette is defined by it’s outLINE.

Learn to think beyond literal lines. An implied line can be a row of items in your frame, like footprints on a beach. The photo below is full of real and implied lines that all lead your eye to the subject. The shoreline, the horizon, and the footprints on the beach all lead toward the subject (my wife and my dog).

The leading lines in this shot include the shoreline and the footprints in the sand

There are a couple of things to remember about lines. Your viewer’s eye will tend to follow a line, so use lines to direct the viewer to your subject. You will also want to be conscious of the lines in your background. Avoid poles, trees, etc. sticking out of peoples’ heads. You will also want to avoid decapitating people with background lines if you can help it. These seem like simple things, but it’s those little things that can make the difference between an “amateur” shot and one that looks “professional”.

Text-book Rule of Thirds composition

[Editors Note: This week we have Rob Knight on a weeklong series of composition tips just for you. We'll have one article a day starting today Sunday, and continuing all the way thru Saturday!]

How much research did you do before you bought your last camera? How about the last lens you bought, or even the last camera bag? How much time have you devoted to learning the latest Photoshop tricks or perfecting your HDR workflow? There are endless resources online about the technical aspects of making photos, and I’ve read at least half of them! Now… how much time have you spent lately thinking about composition? I find that my students generally have a lot of questions about camera settings and lens choices, and very few questions about how to compose better pictures.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t think that your photos should be bound by strict RULES, but I think you should be familiar with some basic visual tools. If some of these elements are new to you, I’ll bet that you can look back through your favorite images and find that you employed some of these ideas instinctively. You may think that these elements are unnecessary because you have a “good eye”, but if you apply these visual tools to your already “good eye” you can learn to express your vision in a more effective and compelling way.

Day 1… Rule of thirds.

The rule of thirds is fairly simple to understand. Imagine a grid over your image that divides your frame into thirds vertically and horizontally. Your subject should be placed along one of the gridlines, or where the gridlines intersect, and the horizon should be along one of the horizontal lines.

Here's the same shot with a rule of thirds grid overlay

You don’t have to apply the rule of thirds in such a literal way. Think of it as a good reminder to keep your subject out of the “dead center” of the frame, and keep your horizon from dividing the picture in half. Even without using the exact thirds of the frame, your composition will be more interesting and dynamic if you think about these ideas when you are framing a photo.

The next time you are shooting a portrait try using the rule of thirds. Place the subject’s body along one of the vertical lines, and their eyes in line with one of the horizontal lines, then have them face slightly toward the center of the frame.

How easy is tethered capture? Fuggedaboutit!

Tethered shooting is a great way to make sure you’re “getting the shot”. Shooting tethered means that your DSLR camera is attached to your computer so that your images transfer directly to your hard drive instead of being saved to your memory card. The camera is normally connected to the computer via a USB cable,and some systems offer a wireless connection option as well. It is much easier to check exposure, focus etc. on a large computer screen than it is on your camera’s LCD.

You also need software on the computer to capture images from the camera. Starting with Lightroom 3 Beta 2, this function is built right into Lightroom for many Nikon and Canon camera models. Here’s how it works, and a couple of tips for making the most of it.

First, connect your DSLR to your computer using a USB cable and turn on your camera. If you shoot this way a lot you will want to get a long USB cable or a USB extension cord so you have enough cable to move freely. You’ll also want to make sure your computer is secured so you don’t pull it onto the floor with the USB cable.

In the Library module inside Lightroom 3 beta 2, select File> Tethered Capture> Start Tethered Capture… This will bring up the Tethered Capture dialog where you will select the session name, file naming options, destination, and metadata including keywords. When you click ‘OK’ you will see a bar with your camera name and current exposure settings. If your camera doesn’t show up right away try turning the camera off, then back on. I haven’t found that one way works better than another with my Nikon D700. Sometimes I turn the camera on first, sometimes I start tethering first. It doesn’t seem to make a difference. I would like to hear your experience in the comments.

Now you’re up and running. Here are a couple of ways to make the most of this setup using the Color Checker Passport from X-rite. Once you have your lighting set up, take a shot of the Color Checker Passport. Inside Lightroom, select the Passport shot and choose File> Export with Preset> Color Checker Passport. Name the profile (possibly the same as the session name), and the X-rite software will build a DNG profile for your particular camera and lighting situation.

You will need to quit Lightroom 3 beta 2 in order to use the new profile. Restart Lightroom and start Tethered Capture again. Your Session, Naming, etc. settings should be saved from earlier. Take a shot of your subject holding the Color Checker Passport and switch to the develop module. Go to the Camera Calibration Panel (command/cntrl 8) and select the profile you just created from the drop down menu. Press W to select the White balance eyedropper and click on one of the white balance targets on the Passport to set the white balance.

In the Tethered Capture control bar under Develop Settings, select Same as Previous. Now your shots will come straight from the camera with your custom profile applied and properly white balanced. Nice!

You can apply any develop settings this way. For example, you can get the sharpening or noise reduction the way you like it and automatically apply it to your photos as you’re shooting.

I like to make my previews as large as possible on my computer while I’m shooting tethered. Press the F key to enter Full Screen mode. There are three options here, so press F until the Lightroom interface takes up the whole screen. Now press command/cntrl tab to hide all of the panels. Press T to hide the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, then press \ to hide the Library filters bar if it’s visible. Now press E or double-click an image to enter Loupe view, and you will see you images at maximum size while you’re shooting tethered.

Pocosin Lakes NWR, NC. 3-shot HDR

When you are shooting images you intend to combine into a high dynamic range (HDR) image you usually want one image at the recommended exposure, one image under exposed by 2 stops and one image overexposed by 2 stops. Most DSLR cameras today can capture these three images quickly and easily using a feature called auto exposure bracketing. Your camera probably has a button or menu item called AEB or BKT to activate this feature.

If your camera allows you to bracket three shots with 2 stops in between, you’re all set. Be sure your camera is on a tripod, set your frame-rate on ‘continuous’ and use a remote or cable release. But what if your camera can’t bracket in 2-stop increments? I get this question a lot from Nikon shooters, and there is an easy answer.

For some reason the higher end Nikon DSLR cameras can only bracket up to 1-stop increments. I use a Nikon D700 and a D300s. I can bracket three, five, seven or nine shots, but I can only do so 1-stop at a time. The D200, D300 and even the D3 series have the same bracketing options. Here’s how I work with these options for shooting HDR.

I bracket five shots with 1 stop between them. I end up with -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2 EV. When I import my photos and go to process my HDR image I use only the -2, 0 and +2 images in the series. I normally end up trashing the -1 and +1 shots, but sometimes I use one of these images to make the final HDR.

It would be great if Nikon would let us bracket 2 stops at a time. Nikon D90 and even D5000 users can bracket 2 stops, so it’s probably as simple as a firmware update. Until then I’ll keep my fingers crossed and use this simple workaround.

The image in this post shot with a Nikon D700 and 24-70mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens. The three exposures were combined and tone-mapped with Photomatix Pro. Finishing touches were applied in Lightroom2. Enter the discount code “RobKnight15″ for 15% off when you order Photomatix Pro at www.hdrsoft.com.

Tundra Swans. Pocosin Lakes NWR, NC

I recently had the pleasure of assisting Juan Pons at his “Geese, Swans and Bears” photo workshop in North Carolina. Birds are not a frequent subject of mine, but I always jump at the chance to learn something new.

As photographers, we tend to concentrate our efforts on learning one particular type of photography. It could be wildlife, portraits, landscapes or any number of other disciplines. It’s great to develop a personal style and hone your skills in a specific area, but sometimes it’s good to make pictures that are outside of your area of expertise.

Exploring other disciplines can give you a fresh perspective on your work. Perhaps learning to create depth in a landscape photo will give you new ideas for dramatic portraits. Lighting techniques you learn for portraiture could help you make more compelling wildlife shots. Maybe taking your old Polaroid out will give you some cool post-processing ideas.

Dock Sunrise. Lake Phelps, NC. 3-shot HDR

The easiest way to try something new is to give yourself an assignment. It can be something simple… Go shooting with only one lens. Try shooting only with the lens you use the LEAST. Get together with friends and give each other assignments. You friends’ ideas could help spark your creativity.

A class or workshop is another great way to try something new. Unfamiliar techniques are much easier to master with the help of a good instructor. Workshops range from one-day seminars to two-week trips to exotic locations. Pick a class outside of your comfort zone and dive into it.

Top image captured with a Nikon D300s w/ 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR Nikkor lens.
Bottom image captured with a Nikon D700 w/ 24-70mm f/2.8G Nikkor lens