Another shot from last week’s session with Camille. I really liked this shot, I used some christmas lights to create a sparkly effect, and my dirty lens helped to make it even more pronounced. I’m getting to a point where if there’s nothing between the camera and the model I start to get bored. And Camille gave great attitude for this one, which really put the whole picture over the top. More to come.
I found this great article on the Guardian about how some quick pictures of a brawl at an Ukrainian Courthouse has amazing composition, rivaling the composition of renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci. An artist named James Harvey explained why the composition is so strong by overlaying a golden spiral onto the picture.
It’s difficult to compose a picture with the golden spiral in mind, since there’s often a lot of elements to carefully arrange in order for the spiral to make sense…. but why not emphasize the golden spiral in the post processing stage? Use it as a compositional / cropping tool? I decided to play around with this image I took the other day that I was having a hard time finding a suitable composition for:
Overlaying a golden spiral onto it, I wound up with this:
Then I used Dodging and Burning to darken and brighten areas according to the spiral:
And I wound up with this, which does have a much better sense of flow and composition to it:
All in all, I like it. Using the golden spiral in this way is a fun and simple way to vary up your composition from the usual rule-of-thirds that most photographers stick to. I might have to work the spiral more in the future. I think it could be especially useful in really layered compositions and multi-image composites. Fun stuff.
I’ve had this mysterious / wrapped in shadows / out of focus sparkles idea for a while now, so when Camille came over to the studio the other day I seized the opportunity to get it done. Camille has such a great mysterious / suspicious look in this one, it really helps sell the shot and takes the image to a whole new level. I love it when that happens.
