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March 10, 2011 by Kat

Exploring with a Camera: Square Format

Composed

Happy Thursday! Welcome to Exploring with a Camera day, my favorite day of the week. Today we’re going to learn about composing with a Square Format. At the end of the post there is a link up, for you to share your images using a square format. If you want a chance for your Square Format image to be featured here on the blog next week, you can also place your photo in the Exploring with a Camera Flickr group.

I got the idea for playing around with Square Format from the book 150 Photographic Projects for Art Students by John Easterby. I haven’t used this format before, so I picked up another book that has become my “encyclopedia” for composition, The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman, and looked at the traditional compositions for a square format. With a little bit of information in my head to guide my eye, I was off and exploring Square Format.

Let’s see what I learned…

Getting it Square

Unless your main camera is your cell phone, chances are you don’t have a square format camera. The typical frame format for digital SLR cameras is 3:2. This means that the length is longer than the height of the frame by one third. A standard size in this format is a 4×6 print. For point-and-shoot cameras the typical frame format is 4:3, where the length is longer than the height by only one quarter. It is closer to square but still not quite the same.

The first step of this exercise is getting a square format. You can always crop the photo into a square format in post-processing. This can teach you a lot, but it doesn’t help you to play around with composition at the time of taking the photo so you can make real-time corrections.

What the 150 Photographic Projects book suggests is creating a “pseudo” square format camera by blocking off part of the LCD screen so that you view only a square. Since I intensely dislike using the “live view” mode for composing with the LCD on my dSLR, I decided to modify my point-and-shoot camera (aka my “little camera”). This turned out great, because I was able to leave my little camera in this format for several weeks, even taking it on our vacation to Sicily, while not interfering with my normal photographic process using my primary dSLR camera.

To modify the LCD screen, I just taped a piece of computer paper over the LCD screen as shown below. I used computer paper because I wanted to have a similar color to the rest of the camera, to give a visually consistent border on the frame. Computer paper was not thick enough to block the light coming through the LCD, so I slipped a small piece of dark cardstock behind the taped computer paper and it worked beautifully.

I keep my camera set on center spot for focusing, so I just focus and recomposed as needed, like I do normally. With this minor modification, I was ready to go. My 9-year-old son, observing this little exercise, would occasionally take his camera and put a finger over the edge of the LCD as he composed saying, “Square Format!” In a pinch, that works too!

What follows are some of the compositions I explored. You’ll see a caption below each photo. “Cropped” means that the photo was created using the standard format frame for the camera and then a square format composition was explored using cropping in post-processing. “Composed” means that the photo was composed using my modified-LCD-screen as shown above. I still had to crop in post-processing to make the image a true square format, but the composition was decided in-camera.

Random

With the even sides, a square format is very static. This makes it a good candidate for “random” composition, where the eye takes in the whole at one time. This image of oranges on the tree from Sorrento was a good candidate for square format. There wasn’t a clear “focal point” with these oranges, it was more about the light, shape and color of them on the tree.

Cropped

Another image I would consider to have random composition is this mountain scene from the Alps just north of where we live. There is no clear focal point in this image either, it is of the scene – sun, mountains, light, shadow – and square format works well. I actually needed to crop this one, since there was part of someone’s head on the right hand side. I was in line for the gondola down the mountain and couldn’t get a full frame image unobstructed. A square format crop allowed me to make this image something useful rather than throw it away.

Cropped

Concentric

With it’s even sides, square format provides the unique opportunity to nest a circle in the square. Coming across a pretty door in Cefalù, Sicily, I captured one of the elements carved in wood using square format.

Composed

This door design from Erice, Sicily, captures another circle in the square. This falls into both the concentric and centered composition categories.

Composed

What other circles can you think of that would be great to capture in square format? Flowers, something like a Gerbera daisy, come to my mind.

Centered

With square format, you can get a good effect with centering your focal point, something that doesn’t work as well in rectangular formats. This best capture of this window in Venice using square format was centered.

Composed

The ancient Greek Temple of Concord, found in the Valley of the Temples in Sicily, is front and center in this image. It’s all about the temple here!

Composed

With square format, you can also put the horizon on the center line with good effect, unlike a rectangular format. I saw some great examples of this by American photographer Harry Callahan when I visited an exhibit of his work in Paris. Here is one of his images as an example.

Photo by Harry Callahan

Diagonal

Just like in rectangular format, diagonal lines can be very interesting compositions. The image below of Murano glass displayed in Venice is an example of both diagonal and centered composition. The thing I noticed when playing around with cropping diagonal images is that you need a different angle on the diagonal line to work in square format. If an image was composed with a diagonal line for a rectangular format, there is a good chance it is at a wrong angle to just crop into square format. In the case of this image, I had played around with different angles and happened to have one that worked for square format.

Cropped

Off-Centered

With more rectangular subjects, I found that the subject needed to be off-center using square format. A centered image works with a square or circular subject, but not so well for a person or a tree. Cropping this self-portrait of me in Venice solved the problem of too much wall on either side. Normally, I would have taken this in a vertical orientation, but you can’t really do that when you set your camera on a step. Square format solved my composition problem.

Cropped

The tree-in-the-field image below from Parco di Monza is influenced by the Rule of Thirds. It works with square format too!

Composed

Balance

Ultimately, what it all comes down to in any composition, regardless of format, is balance. The elements have to be balanced within the frame for a pleasing image. The lead-in image, another scene from the town of Cefalù, Sicily, is a good example of a square format image that doesn’t follow any of the specific compositions described above, but balances the elements of color and shape into an interesting photo.

This balcony with the interesting ceramic pots in Taormina, Sicily was another square format image where the composition was derived by balancing the elements of color and line.

Composed

So, how about you, do you have any experience with square format? If not, I encourage you to explore along with me here. Go through your archive and see if there are any images where a square format crop would work well. Modify your camera for a few days to create a “square format” and see what you find. Come back here to link in and share your findings with the rest of us. It will be interesting to see all of the takes on square format that you link in for this theme!

February 9, 2011 by Kat

The Final Fog, and a Winner!

I’m sure this won’t be the last fog photo to ever grace my blog, but it might just be one of the final fog photos of this year. Our days have turned sunny and warmer and the fog has been mist more often than not on my morning walks. Spring is coming! Enjoy this last little bit of the fog, knowing that the change of season is coming soon.

Who won the postcards, from the Exploring with a Camera: Fog link in? My dear friend Mosey of mosey along. Mosey, these will be in the mail to you soon!

Thank you ALL so much for linking in with your wonderful fog photos. I loved seeing them. Join me tomorrow for a brand new Exploring with a Camera topic, I’ve got a fun one planned and I can’t wait to share it with you. See you then!

January 27, 2011 by Kat

Exploring with a Camera: Fog

Winter brings fog, one of the most wonderful weather patterns for photography. I know I’ve said it before here on the blog, but I love fog! Because you can only see what is right in front of you, there is a delicious sense of mystery, of things slowly revealed.

Fog forms when there is high humidity along with a temperature that is very close to the dew point, it is essentially a low lying clound. You can read more about the science of fog here. It will form readily near bodies of water, like lakes and rivers, and in cooler temperatures. That’s why you often find fog early in the morning, dissipating as the weather warms up.

I’ve had the good luck to live two places now where fog is common: Oregon and northern Italy. It forms frequently here at my house in Italy, since we are right near the large Parco di Monza through which the Lambro River runs. A large, natural open space is a great source of fog – temperatures are always cooler in the park and the moisture is abundant from the landscape.

How can you use fog as an element in your photography? Here are a few ideas…

Fog provides a great backdrop, to capture a single element. A distracting background can be completely hidden in the fog. I use this feature to capture silhouettes, like the lead-in image of the post and this image below. The detail is highlighted by the blank backdrop. I also converted both of these to black and white, to heighten the contrast. One thing to be careful of with fog is underexposure, because the light white background will dominate your camera’s meter readings. Play around with overexposing your images just a little bit to compensate.

As you move closer to a object, fog slowly reveals. Vary your distance to a subject to create a different effect and feel in your images. The two images below are of the same tree on the same day, but taken at different distances. The first one, farther away from the camera, creates that sense of mystery I was talking about earlier.

For both of these images, I again converted to black and white to heighten the contrast. Fog desaturates colors and your images can look almost black and white straight out of the camera, but converting to black and white can keep the focus on the shapes and tones rather than what little color remains.

You can use fog to get a sense of depth in your photo. While photographers often manipulate the depth of field through aperture, you can also create depth using the atmosphere. Fog creates depth by successively lightening the objects in the background as you move away from the foreground. You can see this effect in the image of the trees below.

Light fog can give a subtle effect, as in the next example. Along with placement, focus and color, the sense of the largest tree as the focal point is enhanced by the fading trees behind.

Heavy fog can make depth obvious, even at short distances. This image of a tree shows the effect of a heavy fog, the back of the tree already fading significantly compared to the front.

All of these examples so far are from farther away, what happens when you get up close? You can see condensation on the surfaces. Get in close to see what I call “beads of fog” on the smaller objects around you.

I’ve talked about what is revealed as you move through the fog, but also consider what is revealed as the fog is lifting. This image, taken looking up through the fog, shows the blue sky peeking through as the fog is burned away by the sun.

In this image, you can see how interesting it can be to capture the sun through the fog. This was an unusual day, because the fog seemed to be disappearing from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Finally, don’t forget about capturing the world in fog at night. You know I love night! Fog seems to amplify the artificial lights of night, creating a warm glow that is unlike any other night effect. I did no color or exposure correction on these, I liked them as they came out of the camera.

I know many of us are anxiously awaiting summer for the warmth and light of the sun. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have right now, take a moment to celebrate fog, one of the delightful gifts of winter.

Today I am going to try something different! As a welcome to the participants in the Scavenger Hunt from Ashley Sisk’s Ramblings and Photos, I’m going to open the linky today and keep it open for two weeks. (If you are in a blog reader, come over to the blog to see the link tool.) I’ll still post the linky next Thursday for Share Your View as usual, if you want some time to capture the fog or look through your archive.

In addition, I’m going to give away a set of my Black and White postcards by random drawing to one person who links in a fog photo. I haven’t given away a set of these yet on my blog, and since this set includes the foggy tree image it is the perfect time to give these away.

Thanks for sticking with me! Good luck with your fog photos, I look forward to seeing what you capture. You can find the code to copy and paste the Exploring with a Camera button on your blog here.

January 25, 2011 by Kat

Capture the Sky

I have been fascinated with skies lately. Whenever I am out and about, I find myself capturing a few images of mostly sky. Maybe just a little bit of something else, to ground the image, like this tree in silhouette.

There is so much possibility in the sky. It’s wide open, too big to capture it all with the camera. I can only capture little glimpses, enough to give an impression. The glimpses are so fleeting, as the sky is ever changing. The clouds and the light do not hold for any photographer, I have to catch what I can.

I am once again reminded of the Spiral of Creativity by this image of the sky. We do the best we can to capture the fleeting inspiration that comes to us, and pull it into our spiral. We figure out how to make this transitory and insubstantial thing, this idea, into something real. For all of the giant, expansive nature of ideas, we have to break them down. Frame them into something manageable in order to proceed.

Turn an idea into a manageable plan. Capture a piece of the sky. It’s all the same thing, and about as easy to do either. Yet, I am challenged to continue trying. Maybe, just once in a while, something great comes out of the effort. Something I can share with you.

January 5, 2011 by Kat

Lessons from Abroad: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Lessons from Abroad: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

[This post is part three of a five part series. You can see the first two parts on Monday and Tuesday.]

We’ve talked about how to Change up Your Schedule and Find a Regular Practice as keys to finding your passion and purpose. The next lesson from abroad is this: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone.

Certainly, moving to a new place is a big change for anyone. Moving internationally, to a different culture is even bigger, because it goes to the fundamental assumptions of everything in your daily life. How you interact with other people, how you pay the bills, even how (and where) to find the essentials you need for daily living. Add in a different language, the added complication of not even being able to communicate basic questions and ideas, and you are set back even further. I literally felt like a child, and for a while my independence was completely gone and my confidence shattered.

For some people, an international move may be a piece of cake. For me, and probably for many, it was significantly outside of my comfort zone. It seemed a big choice, a big risk in the initial decision. And it was a big stress, with the move and subsequent adjustments. Not only dealing with my own insecurities and stresses, I had my family along in this adventure – I had to worry about them too. We went through all of the phases with any big adjustment – the “what the hell did I do” phase, the honeymoon period of excitement, the frustration period of learning to do things differently, and finally acceptance. I am in a good place now, in our second year of the assignment. I have learned to love much about this beautiful country, and accept the things that I don’t.

When you have the opportunity to really shift out of your comfort zone like I have, you start to see things in a different light. In addition to really looking at the fundamental assumptions I was making in life, I have noticed where I was placing unnecessary restrictions on myself. I can now recognize the rules that I had placed on myself and my life, as well as the rules that our culture places on us. I’ve started to question those “rules” as they come up. I examine each one and ask myself, “Do I need this rule? What does it get me? What does it provide others? Do I want to keep it or throw it away?” And I recognize that for each one I throw away, others in my life might not understand or be happy about it. I have to be willing to deal with the results, but it’s important to first be able to see the rules, or you can’t ever decide to change them.

Getting out of my comfort zone with this move has also shown me that I was expecting perfection of myself, or something close to it, since I was comfortable where I was. When you get to a place you are good at something, it’s hard to go back to being a novice again, in any area of our life. It’s hard to accept the fact that you make mistakes, because you get so used to not making them. You have to learn to laugh at yourself again, enjoy the new-ness of something, delight in those first experiences. Let yourself be the beginner for a while. The only way that you can learn something new is to open yourself up to risks and move beyond the current state. You can’t expect perfection right out of the gate.

In reflecting on this experience, I can see that this move was not unlike other times in my life that I’ve gotten out of my comfort zone. Whether big or little changes, they have had similar effects. Getting out of your comfort zone does this amazing, wonderful thing – it doesn’t just shift the realm you are comfortable operating in, it grows it. That’s why difficult situations are often called “stretching” or “growing.” When you get out of your comfort zone, there is that initial discomfort, but over time, with practice, you gain new skills and confidence. You’ve added to what you can manage in your life, the landscape you can negotiate.

When you can add to your life in this way, there is this important side effect that can directly lead you to your passion and purpose: You can begin to see new possibilities. Thoughts or ideas that would never have seemed plausible before can become real. As I was walking in the park this week (part of my regular practice), I was enjoying the first fog of the season and came up with a wonderful analogy. Often, when you get out of the comfort zone of your life, it can feel like you’re in the fog. You can’t see to far ahead, only the next few steps in front of you. More and more is revealed as you move further. It can feel scary and uncertain. But once in a while in the fog, if you stop and look around, look up, you can see a glimpse of what the day is going to be like – the blue sky and sun. That’s the new possibility that you can only see as you start to look at the world in different ways, because the fog obscures your normal view. You won’t notice this little glimpse of your future, without the fog, or the shift in your comfort zone.

How can you get out of your comfort zone, and gain the benefits of this new perspective? How can this help you connect with your passion and purpose?

Actively seek an opportunity to move out of your comfort zone. Maybe it’s a job change, taking on a different assignment. Maybe it’s a new activity. Have you had an urge to take an art class, even though you have no previous experience? How about drama – putting yourself out there in front of others? Maybe it’s learning about an aspect of technology. Maybe it’s a change in relationships – adding, removing, changing your interactions with people. Maybe it’s travelling to a new place. Anything that you might have the thought, “Yeah, that looks interesting but I could never do it for reasons x, y, z.” Why not try? I started painting while in Italy, just because I got the urge. That activity led to me really exploring my creativity and the beauty of the world around me in a whole new way.
Recognize that uncomfortable feeling you get when you step out of your comfort zone. Acknowledge it, accept it, but don’t run away. A natural way to react when you feel uncomfortable is to turn around and go right back to where you were. The first step to recognize, acknowledge and accept. Then take a deep breath and move forward. The uncomfortable feeling will still be there, but know you are doing this for a reason – it’s called growth.
Be willing to let yourself be a novice. People who are new to things make mistakes. Their work isn’t the best. It’s really hard to go from being on the top of your game to being the newbie when you step out of your comfort zone. Instead of avoiding mistakes, give yourself permission to be bad at whatever you are doing, but keep going. Learn from the mistakes, the “failures.” Laugh at yourself as much as possible, and seek others who will help you keep this light-hearted perspective. You might find that the failures aren’t so bad after all. One of the best things that I have learned in this experience is to laugh at myself. To marvel at just how little I actually know!
Keep track of those little rules that pop into your head. The ones that say, “I never…” or “I should…” Write them down, really take a hard look at them. Are they real? What can you do to remove them? What would life look like if you no longer lived by this rule? Make a decision, whether or not you want to keep this rule. Maybe observe when you use it, and if it’s serving to keep you safely rooted in your comfort zone or if it will help you move in the direction you want to go.

I have recently been pondering the quote, “If you do what you’ve always done, you will get what you’ve always gotten.” I can’t really argue the truth of this statement. How do you get something different, something better, if you do the same things all of the time? You can’t. Life doesn’t work that way. The only way to get something more – whether it’s time or money or relationships or personal growth – is to do something different, take a risk, move through the fear that holds us at the status quo. Move out of your comfort zone.

(Photo is from Parco di Monza, Italy)

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