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This comprehensive guide by Susan Duncan covers essential photography skills to enhance your photos - from ensuring technical quality with clear, focused images to creating dramatic appeal and compelling photo compositions. Learn valuable tips on framing, lighting, and storytelling for captivating photographs.
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Three Areas of Photography to ConquerTechnical QualityDramatic AppealPhoto Composition By Susan Duncan Pine Tree High School
Technical Quality • Do not use muddy or out-of-focus pictures EVER. If you can’t clean the image up in Photoshop, choose another photo. • Avoid grainy photos • Remove even small blemishes in Photoshop • Use your best ACTION photos as dominants • Use a flash or strobe in low-light situations • When shooting available light, bracket your exposures and take several photos to assure good technical quality.
Dramatic Appeal • WHAT IS IT? • Tell a story with your photo • Show action • Display mood • HOW DO I DO IT? • Get close-up shots, mid shots and wide shots • Take pictures of faces, not backs • Avoid POSED pictures. They make caption writing atrocious. Besides, they’re boring.
Photo Composition • Use a shallow depth of field to get rid of a busy background • Look for a strong center of interest • Use the quality and direction of available light to create interesting composition. • Use the rule of thirds • Look for textures, patterns • Look for leading lines • Frame the subject • Move CLOSE • Create interesting angles
Tips • Shoot at 10 feet, 5 feet and 2 feet. • People are vertical, landscapes are horizontal. You can turn the camera both directions. • Freeze action with flash or higher shutter speeds. • Adjust f-stops to increase or decrease depth of field • Carry more film and batteries than you think you’ll need
Tips (cont’) 6. Pay attention to backgrounds. 7. Use throw-away cameras to expand coverage. 8. Shoot five times as many photos as you think you’ll need. 9. Develop a filing system, and stay current.
Cropping • Crop closely- you don’t always need a full-body picture • However, don’t try to enlarge a photo so much that it becomes grainy. • Crop at the chest on the front rows of group photos. • Don’t crop at joints-ankles, knees, wrists
You have the POWER • You can boldly go where no crowd has gone before; you are a member of the working press. Do not be afraid. • THINK about the activity. What happens behind the scenes? How can you show a different perspective? • Follow not only the action on the field but all the hoopla that goes on off the field • Go backstage at all productions. Take crowd reaction shots also. • Make friends with coaches, teachers, secretaries, and administrators so that they allow you to boldly go where you need to go.