Directionality
This lesson is a relatively simple one. I'm calling it Directionality. This is not an official term I don't think, but it's my way of talking about photographing your subject while keeping in mind the direction the eye naturally moves across a picture.
Unless anyone out there is proficient in Hebrew, I'll assume my readers all read and write from left to right. Because we learn it this way, when we look at a piece of paper with words on it our eyes are trained to automatically start on the left of the page and move to the right. When viewing a picture there is a natural movement the eye wants to make as well. As a photographer it's your job of helping this natural movement along. There are two ways of doing this:
1. By helping the eye move from a focal point (something that is placed either along a line placed on a "third", or at the intersecting points in the picture) through the rest of the picture, or
2. By helping the eye enter a picture smoothly and right toward your focal point.
To demonstrate this first point, let's go back to this photo of my daughter Mary:
Because she is placed off center and according to the rule of thirds, I've photographed her in a way that your eye has room to move from her face over to what is in front of her, which gives you information about what she's doing at the time the picture was taken. This is the most common way directionality is taken into account while photographing subjects - by making sure to leave more room in the photo for whatever the subject is facing or looking at. The eye wants to move from the focal point of her face to what she's facing. This is especially helpful in scrapbooking, because you want your photos to help you tell the story or memory you're preserving.
Here's a good example of this: two versions of a picture I took the other day of my son in a tunnel at a playground:
Notice his head and body are off center, more or less at a line of third, and his entire body is in the shot. But does it feel awkward to you that you focus on his face and then your eye has nowhere really to go? Now take a look at the full version I captured on camera:
This picture is more visually appealing and tells a better story, I think. Your eye focuses on him and then has room to move in the direction he is moving. You get more of a feeling as to what is going on when the picture was taken, an important quality most scrapbookers would want to capture in their scrapbooking, I think.
Keep in mind something I said last time - sometimes rules can be broken, or at least tweaked a little! In this picture, my son is running but looking behind him. Which version do you like better? The one with more space in front of him, or behind him?
I think the second version provides the most visual interest. He's looking behind him, which causes the viewer to wonder, what is it he is running from? Another way to tweak the rule is to photograph more space behind the subject to show how far they've walked, for example. Really it all depends on the story you're trying to tell by taking the photo in the first place.
OK now we're moving on to the second point I mentioned earlier: How to help the eye enter a picture smoothly and right toward your focal point. The best way to do this is by using lines. Diagonal lines are the biggest attention getters as far as photos go. But any line in a photo will cause the eye to follow it, so you want the lines leading toward your subject if you can. The best way I can explain this is just by showing you, so here are a bunch of photos I've taken keeping the lines in mind:
In this first photo, notice the diagonal line of the sidewalk that draws the viewer in and up toward the subject of the photo. And in the following pictures, the slide and fence do the same thing.
In the below picture, the mower my son is playing with leads your eye up toward him in a way that taking the shot straight on might not have.
In this next shot, the cars as well as the rug lead your eye up the picture toward the focal point.
In the photo of my daughter below, I've moved over a bit so that the actual chair is creating a diagonal line up towards her, rather than photographing her straight on.
This next photo demonstrates both of my points well. The diagonal lines of the shore and water naturally lead the eye toward the subject, and there is more space in the direction he is looking, which would flow well with my accompanying journaling on a layout about how tentative he was about wading in the chilly lake.
One last tip: the way you angle your camera toward your subject can make your actual subject (or parts of him/her/it) a line. Here are a few photos to demonstrate what I mean. In these photos, I've positioned myself in such a way that my daugther is photographed somewhat diagonally. This causes your eye to move naturally right to her face.
And in this next photo, my son's outstretched arm while playing a game of peek-a-boo draws your attention straight to him.
And finally, I have homework for you! Take pictures while keeping the directionality of your subjects in mind. Experiment with lines and keep in mind what story you want to tell with the picture. This should help you position your subjects in a way that a viewer knows more of what you were trying to capture. Next week's lesson will be much shorter, thanks for hanging in there with me for so long this time! :)
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