Forget the Rule of Thirds, do this instead… – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this week's video if you need a website or a domain go to squarespace.com forward slash James for 10 off your first purchase hi everyone um I press record and then my laptop died so I've just rebooted it hopefully that fixes the problems we'll see today what I thought I'd do is talk a little bit about composition which is probably the thing that I'm asked most about in photography and I've not spoken about it for ages so I thought today we could revisit it um there are lots of composition videos on YouTube lots of information on blogs and in books and stuff but most of it I have found centers on the rules rule of thirds rule of odds rule of space leading lines negative space filling the frame packing the foreground all that stuff all good stuff powerful techniques and as useful as those techniques can be I have found particularly when you're dealing with beginners that often it will end up informing what they shoot not just how they shoot and the issue with that is that if you've got a boring subject it doesn't matter how you shoot it and if you've got a leading line towards it it's still going to be boring so today what I thought I'd do is talk through how I think about what to shoot and just as importantly how I shoot it in the hope that it's interesting maybe useful it's not the way it's just a way as with all photography there is no right and wrong but uh yes let's see if this laptop works now the easiest part of Photography as far as I'm concerned is working out what it is that we want to photograph and the reason that I think is the easiest part of Photography is that my parameters are pretty loose really basically if I see something that I think looks nice I will want to photograph it now of course those things will be different for all of us some of us like mountains some of us like dogs some of us like insects now the difficult bit and in fact I think the hardest bit of Photography is working out how to photograph those things and in the main that's what I want to talk about today now every film or movie has a lead actor or most of them do and every film or movie or most of them have supporting actors and typically the job of the supporting actor is to make the lead actor stand out in some way and so dialogue with the supporting actor can make the lead actor seem a bit softer and equally if the supporting actor needs saving in some way then the lead actor can look caring or tough but in many instances the relationship between a supporting actor and a lead actor is crucial for the story and I think it's exactly the same in photography so we have our main subjects in our photos the thing that caught our eye but we also have supporting subjects and it's the job of those supporting subjects to accentuate the main subject and maybe they'll be accentuating the beauty the size the texture the mood but in some way they will be helping our main subject stand out so this photo here I think is a pretty good example of that we've got the Caravan plan which is the main subject and then this tree overhanging it which I would suggest is a supporting subject and I suppose it's kind of acting as like a shelter a protector of some kind but I'd also say it's a crucial part of the story of this Caravan and whenever I'm photographing something like this and I see pretty much straight away that the supporting subject really is supporting the main subject and not distracting from it then I know for sure that I want to include it in my scene the question then becomes how much of it do I want to include in my scene because the key with this photo and indeed all photos is trying to work out your quantities how much of your supporting subject do you need to show for it to adequately support your main subject without distracting from the main subject and so if I was to crop into this Caravan I think you'd completely lose the sense of place that you get with a large percentage of this tree in the frame similarly if I'd have gone for a wider focal length or if I show got this from further back and ended up with more of the tree in the frame I think the result would have ended up with the subject being too small in the frame and not prominent enough I saved the subject the Caravan and so for me composition is really working out this dance between the supporting elements and the main subject and how they can both complement each other the best and if you look through my portfolio there are plenty of examples where I've got a supporting subject but where I don't include the entire supporting subject and more often than not that's because I want a supporting subject I really feel it adds to the scene but my concern is that by including the entire supporting subject I would dilute the impact of the main subject so that's definitely the case with these electricity pylons in Abu Dhabi I like how the supporting subject in the foreground acts as a frame for the one in the distance but were I to include any more of the one in the foreground than I think the one in the background the main subject would just become inconsequential is that a word if I made that up inconsequential it sounds right uh here's another one so this is a mine down in Cornwall you might remember this from a video last year uh and at the mine was this tower that you see on the right hand side of this image and in this photo I decided not to include the entire thing for fear of diluting the main subject and so like I say my mindset is this constant dance between how the supporting subjects interact with the main subject and ultimately what we're trying to do is work out what adds to the story and what distracts from the story and It's tricky because that will always be down to personal opinion so let's take these wheelbarrows for example which I shot down in Cornwall last year as well now I could have made this shot an awful lot simpler by taking 10 Paces to my right and then I basically could have got a profile of them just with the c behind or if I've got lower I wouldn't have even had to have had the ocean I could have just had three wheelbarrows in a line and then a wall behind them and so what I've chosen to do actively is is to position myself to include an awful lot more than that and in my view the things that I've chosen to add have added to the story and to the shot but of course you may disagree you may find the stuff in the background super distracting and think the photo is just way too complicated uh same with this shot so this was another one from the frost last winter we've got the Sheep we've got this bright orange tree we've got the steam coming off this Farm or factory whatever it is then we've got the moon so on the one hand it looks like quite a simple scene I think because of the color palette more than anything else but also there's quite a lot going on and how much you include and how much you take away from a shot will always be down to personal preference but working out what you think is distracting what you think adds I think is the Crux of good photography and I should say actually that whenever there are more than two elements in a scene so here we've got arguably four potential subjects whenever that's the case spacing and waiting are key and if you've got one half of the image which is super crowded where all other potential subjects sitting it's probably not going to look all that nice on the eye oh the other thing is just this image and photos like this I can show you some other examples too is that regardless of whether you choose to include or not include the entirety of a supporting subject you need to be deliberate about it so with this shot for example there is some space between the subjects and the edge of the frame and that I have found is crucial if you're going to include the entirety of a subject because the closer to the edge of a frame a supporting subject or a main subject gets the more likely it is to look cluttered distracting or just like a mistake now sometimes supporting subjects will present themselves to you in such a way that it's so obvious how to shoot them that you don't even really need to think about it this one's a good example of that these penguins that are shot in Antarctica I knew I wanted the Hut as well and I knew I wanted the mountains they're too fantastic supporting subjects and so it was just entirely obvious immediately how I had to shoot that this is another good example again in Cornwall all where the swell was coming in in such a direction that basically meant the waves were pointing up to the buildings from the corner of the frame and it just meant that the supporting elements are either waves presented themselves in such a way that was so obvious that you had to shoot it like that but then other times I'll find scenes which kind of look nice but I'll have to hunt a bit for a supporting element and this house is a pretty good example of that so it's a nice enough country house surrounded by Greenery but I don't think it's particularly strong or compelling image but luckily after a bit of hunting I found a track leading to the house and that track basically became a really effective supporting element and therefore it was an absolute no-brainer to try multiple ways of including that in the frame so yeah the rules they're great rule of thirds all that fantastic but I think what matters equally is having a grasp of main subject and supporting subjects and how they can be gelled together to create the most impactful shot so to summarize I will go out and try and find something that makes me think oh that's nice I'll then look around the subject to try and see if there's anything that adds to the subject or distracts from it and subsequently I'll then try and work out how I can add some of the stuff into my frame that supports the subject and how I can get rid of some of the stuff that doesn't and finally once I'm in a place where I've done that I'll then try and work out if I can use focal lengths or moving forward or backwards or getting low or high or whatever to try and work out how I can best emphasize the relationship between those elements and how I can utilize the supporting subjects to maximize the prominence of the main subject and when I say prominence I don't just mean the size of the frame I mean the impact that the subject has on you given its surroundings and sometimes supporting subjects are really simple it can just be negative space around a subject and other times it's more of a jigsaw where you've got four or five competing subjects and you're trying to work out how to piece them together in such a way that they add up to more than the sum of their parts rather than less than the sum of their parts but in short that is how I go about trying to work out not just what to shoot but how to shoot it and hopefully it made some sense anyway thank you for listening to me uh rub it on for I've been talking can't see and also thank you to the sponsor of this week's video Squarespace so many of the photos that I've shown you today are in my portfolio and therefore on my website because my website my Squarespace website is my portfolio and one of my favorite things in life to do is sit with a coffee and curate my favorite images and if I get back from a trip and I've got a couple more portfolio shots then sitting down and trying to work out how to add them to my portfolio and where they should sit in my portfolio given their tone given their storyline given their mood that is just a process that I absolutely love and of course there are many ways you can do that some people like to curate books other people like to do zines and I love to do those things too but a website is something you can revisit time and time again and you can just sit there and sequence all day until your heart's content so if you would like to check out Squarespace for yourself you can do so for free by going to squarespace.com to start your free trial and you can select a template find one that looks pretty good to you and then it's just a case of drag and drop and ordering your photos as you wish and then when you've got a website that you help you with at the end of your trial if you'd like to make a purchase you can save 10 of that first purchase by going to squarespace.com forward slash James yeah and a big thank you to them for their continued support of this Channel and to you for watching uh next week we'll be back outside I always say that but we will I'm not doing two indoor videos in a row and like I said I think at the end of last week's video it'll probably be in the rain plus okay I'll see you then