This year I’ve found myself using the square format more and more. I enjoy the challenge of composing within the square frame and ‘seeing’ images that would work well in the square format. Like the majority of photographers with digital cameras I don’t have a square format camera, so the process of working within the square format involves visualisation at the time I take the photo and cropping in post-processing.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no such thing as “correct” composition, just bad composition, good composition, and inspired composition.

At the beginning of the year I decided to analyse some of my favourite images to see if I could understand more about their composition. I’ve always been an instinctive photographer – I’ve never thought much about why I compose photos a certain way. I tend to know when the composition looks good in the viewfinder, and that approach has always worked for me. But what if I could identify some of the principles of composition in my strongest images? Could I then apply them consciously and improve my photography? I think so, and along the way I realised that I was discovering things that would be useful to other photographers too. The result is Beyond Thirds: A Photographer’s Guide to Creative Composition, released today by Craft & Vision.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post I talked about seeing in black and white, and how shooting black and white on a digital camera using Raw affects my thought process during a shoot. When I used black and white film (it seems like such a long time ago now) I had to visualise how the scene that I was photographing would turn out in monochrome. There was no point thinking about colour at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

While I’ve never watched The Wire I’ve been interested in the city of Baltimore since I visited a friend there back in 2001. What I never realised from my brief visit is that the city really does seem to have a dark side. Nina Marie is from Maryland and her photos caught my eye because of her photos taken in some of the poorer parts of Baltimore. I’m not a photojournalist – and I admire photographers that risk their personal safety in the pursuit of photographing something interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Olivia Bell is not just a photographer. Together with her sisters (Rosanna and Sasha) she’s built an online business around their work by selling prints, Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions and desktop wallpapers plus a photography eBook called Photography Tips, all marketed through social media websites such as Flickr and Facebook.

Read the rest of this entry »