Taking pictures with the right side of your brain - part 1
I'm willing to bet if you had two equally-skilled photographers photograph the same scene at the same time, side-by-side, one with a camera with a conventional reflex (or LCD) viewing system and the other with a ground glass viewing system, the photographer using the camera with the ground glass viewing system will take a better-composed picture than the picture taken by the photographer using the reflex camera. And the reason the picture composed on the ground glass is better is because it was composed upside-down and backwards.
|Strong images often hide in plain sight, even at your local Metro Station. By scanning the landscape through a frame or your viewfinder, interesting images can be easily found among the details of your everyday world.|
Now odd as that may seem, it starts making sense if you understand the dynamics of how we actually see the world around us. In 1979, a book came out called 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain', by Betty Edwards. The premis of the book is that the brain consists of two distinctly different hemispheres, and if you can mentally separate the two, you can draw better. Although Ms. Edwards does not not specifically address photography, I think you can take better photographs, too.
The left hemisphere, or L-Mode as it's called in the book, is the objective, rational, and linear thinking part of the pair, and it handles the verbal, written, and number-crunching aspects of life. The right side, or R-Mode, is the subjective, intuitive side, and is the side that processes audio / visual content. And unlike the L-Mode, which sees the world as a segmented spreadsheet, the R-Mode sees the world as a changing flow of patterns and shapes.
As we go about our day we are constantly using both spheres. Balancing your checkbook is an example of left hemisphere activity. Conversely, composing a photograph or sketching a scene on paper, i.e. 'seeing', is more of a right hemisphere affair.
As you might imagine this very same yin-yang interplay can trip you up when you're trying to draw a landscape or photograph one because while your R-Mode is busy seeing things, the L-Mode is busy cluttering your radar screen with details that, exposure data aside, have little to do with composing a picture.
The trick, as well explained in Ms Edwards’ book, is to essentially dial down the objective information gathered by your brain’s left hemisphere and take better note of the subjective information being gathered by your right hemisphere. In other words, never mind who or what the subject is but rather how does the subject’s form-factor best fill the frame.
Now how all this ties into the dueling photographers scenario described in the opening paragraph is that when you view an image upside-down and backwards, it becomes abstracted. Instead of being somebody or something objectively recognizable, it abstracts your subject into shapes and forms, which allows you to view the image subjectively and in turn allow your visually oriented R-Mode to take over and compose a strong photograph.
Obviously, most of us don’t shoot with view cameras these days, but just because you’re ‘limited’ to a camera with a WYSIWYG reflex or LCD-based viewing system doesn’t mean you can’t learn to see better when composing photographs. Depending on how hard-wired your L-Mode / R-Mode circuitry is, it's actually not all that difficult to fine-tune your eyes, and a cardboard matt from a small picture frame is all you need to start the process.
The big challenge of framing a tightly composed photograph is to eliminate the visual clutter that invariably surrounds your subject. Some shooters have a knack for zeroing in on their subjects while others struggle. If you're part of the latter group, next time you set out on a photo jaunt take a small picture matte along with you. Just as mattes create neutral islands around framed photographs, isolating the image from any visual distractions that might surround it, by previewing a scene through a matte frame while moving it closer and further from your eyes gives you an opportunity to preview the potential image with varying degrees of isolation from its surroundings. If you don't have a matte handy, you can similarly make a set of 'Ls' with the thumb and index fingers of you right and left hands and invert them to form a four-fingere viewing frame.
Regardless of how you choose to open up your R-Mode, be it using a matte frame, a finger frame, or simply viewing through your camera, your goal is to find the meat of the picture, and frame the image's shapes and patterns in a visually strong composition. Get closer, zoom in tighter, shoot from a higher or lower angle, maybe show a bit more background information, or maybe not.
Want more visual tension? Try cropping the image tighter to the subject, or tilting the camera in order to introduce diagonal shapes and movement into the composition. If you you have time, try exploring your subject at various focal lengths, as some pictures work better when taken close up with a wider lens while some images work better seen through a longer focal length.
Conversely, if you want to lighten the atmosphere, or perhaps illustrate your subject in relationship to its surroundings, then allow for a bit more breathing room around your subject. You should also keep in mind while it's always best to shoot tight in the first place, there's no rule that says you can't crop into an existing picture after the fact if the result is a better-composed photograph.
|Global Reach by cjf2|
|Maligne Lake by Pete of Oz|
from - Mountain Lake - (Full Colours only + A Border)
Photographer Rick Wenner recently captured an odd event called the Race of the Gentlemen with a rather odd camera: The Phase One XF IQ3 Achromatic, the world's only 101MP black-and-white digital back.
Buying used is a good way to save some dough, and with the right precautions you can protect yourself from falling victim to a scam.
This two-part video series takes a deep dive into the world of dynamic symmetry and geometric composition, using iconic photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's brilliant photographs as a guide.
Award-winning photographer Jeremy Cowart tells the moving story behind this drone photograph, captured in the aftermath of the devastating wildfire in Gatlinburg, TN in 2016.
Happy 2017 World Photo Day! We asked everyone on staff at DPReview to share one photo that they took within the last year that makes them jazzed on photography. Here's what we chose.
French President Emmanuel Macron has lodged a legal complaint against a paparazzo who snuck onto the president's private vacation property to take pictures.
Ever wonder what the difference is between compressed, uncompressed and lossless compressed Raw files? Photography Life's Nasim Mansurov breaks it down for you in this informative article.
The oldest known portrait of a US president was just discovered after over a century in storage. It's going up for auction in October, where it's expected to fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.
If you're using the popular Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 Art lens with Sigma's MC-11 converter, listen up: you'll want to update your lens and converter firmware ASAP.
If you've heard it once, you've probably heard it a thousand times: never check in your camera gear when flying. This shattered $11,000 lens is what can happen when you do.
Lensrentals just did its first Cine lens comparison, pitting five top-notch 35mm primes against each other: the Zeiss CP.2 35mm T2.1, Canon CN-E 35mm T1.5, Sigma 35mm T1.5 FF, Rokinon Xeen 35mm T1.5 and Schneider Xenon 35mm T2.1.
A team of Google researchers have found that slightly warping watermarks when embedding them into images can help prevent automatic removal.
You don't have to empty your savings account to take your photography to the next level. These cheap buys cost about $50 or less, and come with outsized benefits for your photography.
Joey L, Dani Diamond, Brandon Woelfel and Jessica Kobeissi go head-to-head in an episode of "4 photographers shoot the same model."
The latest flagship phone from Asus combines a 12MP 1/2.55" Sony IMX362 main sensor with a smaller Sony IMX351 chip for 2x zoom and a background-blurring portrait mode.
The company behind popular photo editor Picktorial 3 just released the X-Pack: a preset package that allows you to add Fuji's in-camera film simulation profiles to your RAF files in post.
Photoshop. GoPro. Every once in a while a product emerges that defines a category. And sometimes, it vanishes just as quickly as it arrived on the scene. This week's Throwback Thursday remembers the Flip, the pocket camcorder everyone had – until they didn't.
The Nokia 8's dual-cam combines the image data from a 13MP RGB sensor and a 13 monochrome chip for better detail, improved dynamic range and lower noise levels.
The company behind retail giant B&H Photo has agreed to pay out $3.2 million in monetary relief and back wages to settle a discrimination and harassment case from 2016.
After a popular Facebook teaser and some studio portrait samples, Godox has finally officially released the Godox A1 smartphone flash and flash trigger. Cheap, versatile and innovative, color us intrigued.
Canon’s EOS 5D Mk IV has won the European Imaging and Sound Association’s Professional DSLR of the Year award, making this the third year in a row that the brand has beaten Nikon to the top spot in the professional camera category.
A photograph and quote tweeted out by former president Barack Obama has officially become the most popular tweet of all time, receiving over 1.3 million retweets and 3.4 million likes.
Edward Weston was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, and in this episode of Advancing Your Photography we learn the extreme technique he used to capture one of his most famous still life photos.
Instagram just released a small update that will make a huge difference if you're active on the photo sharing app: threaded comment replies.
Venus Optics has announced the price and delivery date of the second lens to join its Zero-D line up: the 15mm F2 for Sony’s E mount. A lens they've dubbed, "the world's fastest 15mm rectilinear lens for full-frame."
Cinnac is a new social network for photographers that will help you separate your good photos from your great ones through a Tinder-like community-based rating system.
The Canon EF 35mm F2 IS USM is an understated jewel of a lens, and one that we've enjoyed on a variety of cameras since its release almost five years ago. Its relatively small size and image stabilization make it a versatile tool for a variety of photography - check out our sample gallery.
You don't need a fancy studio or tons of gear to capture the kind of classic product photography you see in magazines. In this video, Dustin Dolby shows you how to do it with just a couple of speedlights and some know-how.
The life-logging camera is trying to make a comeback. Say hello to FrontRow, a live-streaming enabled life-logging camera from Ubiquiti that hangs on a necklace like a pendant.
When a prospective client approaches you, don't just say "yes" right away. Here's a useful list of questions you should be asking before you decide to take the job and name your price.