This month'sBoost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge is focusing in on the basic elements of composition: line, shape, form or volume, texture, and color. This week your challenge is to pay attention to shape. See how thinking about shapes can help you grow in your photography. (Click here to read part 1, The Line.)
Shape
Photography, by its very nature, takes a three-dimensional world and renders it in two dimensions. A study of shape moves us from the one-dimensional focus of the line and the curve to the two-dimensional focus of the shape of an object or subject. With shape, think outline, think silhouette. (A further study of light and shadow will add the third dimension: form or volume, which we will study next week.)
There are three basics shapes in visual design: the circle, the square, and the triangle. The trick to seeing and working with shapes in your photography relies on your ability to concentrate on the shape of your subject, as divorced from the reality of what your subject is . Let us take a look at each of these three basic shapes and how to recognize and use them in your photography.
The Circle
A proper circle is a rare shape, one that is observed far greater regularly in built, guy-made environments than in herbal ones. A circle symbolizes stability, symmetry. A mathematical circle is flawlessly spherical and perfectly even. Many herbal items that we think of as circles aren't. Children may additionally draw apples, pumpkins, and the moon as circles however in fact these gadgets are more-regularly imitations of proper circles.
Finding and photographing circles often takes on a degree of abstraction. Only the proper perspective, the proper function, or the right angle will allow your viewer to sign in "circle" when searching at a positive challenge. Spend a while with your situation, shifting round, looking excessive, and looking low, and notice how the form or shapes you notice adjustments as you pass. Only whilst you discover the form which you need, have to you take the image.
The Square
The square is another shape that is common in the constructed world. Most buildings and structures contain squares or rectangles. Squares can convey a feeling of balance and symmetry, like circles, but they are anchored to their straight sides. Squares are blocky and hold more visual weight as well. Differing sizes of squares in a photograph can give a sense of distance or perspective.
The Triangle
The triangle as a shape is the least pleasing of the three. Triangles are pointy and often unbalanced, signaling danger or fear. Mountains can often be glossed as triangles. You can also use perspective and vanishing points to create triangles in your image. Roads leading off into the distance or buildings looked at from below, can seem to converge into triangular shapes.
How Will You Use Shape?
Practice trying to see your composition as shapes and not as subjects. Do not see pebbles on the beach; see circles. Do not see buildings; see squares and rectangles. Do not see mountains; see triangles. Abstract yourself from the definitions of what you are photographing and try to see the underlying shape or shapes.
Then, share what you have discovered! You can share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.
Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is to be had from Amazon. Get the most from your digital camera with realistic advice about the technical and innovative elements of DSLR images as a way to have you ever taking lovely images right away.
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