Michael Freeman: The Appeal of Many

Most of us have an inbuilt fascination with large numbers of things massed together. Naturally, it depends on what things — grains of sand on a beach certainly don’t count for much — but given the right choice of subjects, ones that we don’t normally see, or notice, in large quantities, this us a pretty [...]

Michael Freeman: Subject and Background

Photographs can be about anything at all, but when there’s a real physical subject, its relationship to its setting is crucial. You may choose to make much or little of this relationship, but the choice is almost always there. One of the most obvious things to do is to close right in on your subject [...]

John Dominick: Lead-in lines for stronger landscape compositions

It’s usually considered that landscape photography is a fairly serene and relaxing pastime, which of course it generally is. However most of us have found ourselves confronted with a stunning scene and struggled to compose an image that does justice to the beauty unfolding before us. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself frantically [...]

Stefano Pesarelli: President portrait

The act of framing, for a photographer, is always a choice that emphasizes a part of the image or a subject and exclude elements that might or might not be relevant. As Gaylord Herron said: ” Everything in photography boils down to what’s sharp and what’s fuzzy”. I froze this portrait in a school in [...]

Michael Freeman: Matching shutter speed to the action

Shutter speed becomes important usually for two different reasons. The first is when the lighting conditions and what’s in the picture push the limits so that you’re forced to decide what the slowest shutter speed is that will prevent motion blur. The second is when some motion blur will actually help the image, but the [...]

Michael Freeman: Where does the horizon go?

The horizon is the natural big division in many landscape views. Excluding mountain landscapes and urban landscapes, where the vertical components break it up and make it more irregular and more complex, it can dominate the shot – and this is not always a good thing. Nor is it good to get worried about where [...]

Jerod Foster – Finding Pathways to Strengthen Composition

If you’re like most photographers, you are continually refining the way you envision the world around you. If you’re new to the craft, you are now given the opportunity to see your world in a totally different way! The first thing I notice when I walk into a new environment is how the ambient light [...]