Let's start with what we know. The camera doesn't make the photographer, right? You
can take good pictures with any camera - and, believe it or not, bad pictures too.
So then, really, what does make a good picture? How do you take that abstract
concept of a successful photo and achieve it with any camera? That is what
I'll cover today. This is not a ruler. It's a balancing device - and this eraser
is the fulcrum. So what happens when I set it up and then put a coin right in
the center? Well, nothing too exciting. It stays balanced. And the same is true if
I've got two coins and I put them equidistant from the center. But what about
three? Well, let me take these and then stack this one on top. So, a stack of two,
and then just one. And if you've ever been on a seesaw, right, the answer is
probably obvious: You put the heavier stack close to the center, and the
lighter stack farther away. Perfectly balanced. And all of this has extreme
relevance to photography. We like balance. It looks natural. Even people are roughly
balanced. So is it really any surprise that we also like it when it shows up in
photography? Let me show you some examples. Here's a very centered
composition - lots of balance. Now, the Sun is in the middle (from left to right) and
it's definitely the most sucky part of the frame. Right? It pulls in your
attention. That's the photo equivalent of something heavy. It's kind of like the
coins; in this case, it's like the very first example with just one coin. The
photo is balanced because the heavy part is centered. And I'll show you one more
example like this: mountain, cloud, center. It's balanced because pretty much
everything in this composition is in the middle. But things get a bit more
complicated when there's more than one visually heavy item in your photo. Here's
a case with two of them. Now just like with two coins I
placed the sun and the rock stack equidistant from the center. Each one
balances the other. But what about even more subjects? Well, when many different
parts of your photos suck... visual attention from your viewers... you'll have
to pay careful attention to how you frame the image. Let's take a look at
this photo. One main subject, the waterfall, but lots
of little details that might draw your eye. But I would say that this photo
still feels pretty balanced. Now the waterfall is heavy, but it's pretty close
to the middle of the photo. And this rock is much lighter, but it's also closer to
the edge. Then the nearby tree shifts things back a bit to the right, and then
the distant trees, plus the water at the bottom left, shift them back. Now one
thing that I did do in post production was darken this area of the water just a
bit so that it doesn't draw as much attention. Otherwise, to me, the photo was
leaning slightly to the right. As is, I think it's very balanced. And
here's where things get a bit philosophical. We like balance, yeah? It's
one of the best ways to compose a lot of photos - but why? I think it all comes down
to emotions. Balance feels peaceful, stable, harmonious... and those emotions
very often meld well with your subject and with the message that you're trying
to convey. But what about cases when they don't? Not all your photos need to feel
grounded, and that's where imbalance comes into play. Imbalance is not
peaceful. It's not stable. It's dynamic; it's more intense. Take a look at this
photo. Clearly, this is a harsh landscape. Foreboding. It looks like that world
where you fall into the mirror, and you emerge, and everything's evil. And that's
exactly what I want. That's my goal. A peaceful, balanced, harmonious image
would totally take away from the message here. It works better when it's
imbalanced. But I will say, this is kind of rare. At least personally, I almost
always aim for maximum balance when I compose my photos. It just feels more
comfortable - more intentional. And usually, that's what I want.
So, next time you're taking pictures with your camera, your phone, your secret spy
pen with a camera in it... go for balance. Try to analyze every part of your photo
for visual weight, and pretend that the image is on a
fulcrum. Compose it left to right so that both sides weigh the same. And when they
do - most of the time - your photos are going to look much better.
What is something that everyone hates about the modern world?
Too many distractions. Everywhere. And the way that we feel about things in the outside world is
very often how we feel about them in photography. That was true of balance, and
now it's true of distractions. Everything in your photos should be there for a
reason. If you internalize that, it doesn't
matter whether you've got a phone, DSLR, mirrorless, whatever... simplifying is
the key. And I don't want you to confuse "simplifying" with "empty." This photo
has a crowded composition - almost no empty space. And that, believe it or not, is what makes it simple.
My message was crowdedness. Empty areas just would have been distracting.
So, simplifying does not mean that you need a basic Instagram
photo of a person with the sky above them and nothing else.
Simplifying means streamlining your message. That's it. If you're on the sand
dunes, and you want to show how isolated everything is, then you'd exclude any
plants or footprints that are nearby. And if you're in a forest, and your message
is peacefulness, then you'd exclude any tangled messes of vines off to the side.
And I actually have an example for that one - bad photo. Why is it a bad photo? Well,
too many distractions. Especially in the area off to the right. And now, a good
photo. Fundamentally, they're very similar. Same subject, same time of day... except I
got rid of every distraction that I could in the second shot. That's
simplification. Exclude anything that makes your photo weaker. It sounds stupid simple,
but you've got to think about it in the field, or you just won't do it.
Most people never do.
Next up is visualization. Visualization can be summed up with the most important
advice I've ever gotten in photography. And that is just: Put your noggin into it.
Think! Don't let your decisions make themselves.
Because when you boil it all down, what makes a good photo is emotion. And the
way to get emotions into your photos - at least, one of the best ways - is to make a
thousand little decisions correctly. I've already given you two of the big
decisions (first, balance versus imbalance, and second, should you exclude
"that thing" from your photo, or should you include it?) - but there's way more than
just those. Crowded versus empty composition. Time of day that you take
the picture. Black and white versus color. Bright photo. Dark photo. Camera settings.
Should you or should you not whisper words of encouragement to your camera
before taking the picture? I don't know! All of these are decisions that *you* need
to make on a photo-by-photo basis. I almost have a mental checklist I like to
go through to make sure that I'm deciding all these things consciously
rather than just letting them happen. And the main reason why I take awful photos
with my phone has nothing to do with the quality of the camera. When I take
pictures with my phone, I just don't consciously make any decisions. I pull it
out of my pocket, snap a photo, put it back. When I actually think about things,
I do occasionally take phone photos that I like. Here's one of the very few. Now, I
took it with the mighty iPhone 5, which is many generations obsolete by now,
but it still works. By comparison, with my regular camera, I'm almost always on a
tripod. Then I'm composing carefully, examining the photo I've just taken,
taking some variations, refining my composition, moving around... and I'm
putting conscious thought into what I want to say. So here's one more of the,
we're popping up a photo... and then same landscape, same day, different emotions.
These differences didn't happen by accident. I made conscious decisions both
times to achieve that version of the photo I had in mind. And some of that's
in the field, like the composition; I included the Sun and then I didn't. But a
lot of it is also in post-processing, like the black and white conversion. Now, how
do you know which direction to go with the emotions? Because this just showed
you can kind of go either way. Well, usually what you want to do is
identify the emotions of the subject in front of you.
Maybe it's a sharp-edged mountain, or maybe it's a nice field of wildflowers.
Doesn't matter. Then, try to unify the rest of your photo around the subject's
emotions. That goes for every decision you make: light, composition, camera
settings. Try to synchronize them with the emotions of your subject.
That's why, personally, I like the first of those two aspen photos better. I did
my best the second time to take kind of a gloomy photo, and it sort of worked, but
to me, bright, yellow aspen trees are just a very happy subject.
I'm gonna end this video with a series of five photos.
Let me first cycle through them, and then I'll explain, but each one is a
refinement of the previous. One, two, three, four, five. Back to Photo 1. There's a
few problems here. The subject and the light don't really match, for starters.
And the composition... it is kind of balanced, but it's also empty and
honestly kind of boring. With such an amazing landscape in front of me, that's
really not what I want. Photo 2, at least, is more dynamic. I
found a better piece of ice, got some more appropriate light, and I filled the frame
with my subject. But now, the composition is starting to get kind of complicated,
and I really need to simplify things. Photo 3 is the best one yet. The light
here is right on point. The blocks of ice aren't perfect, but they're pretty
interesting, and this is also a more streamlined composition (although there's
still some room for simplicity). Photo 4 just doesn't work, but I wanted to show
it to you for a couple of reasons. First, the block of ice is the best one yet, and
the light is still fantastic. But I went back to the mistake of the first photo.
It's a very static composition, with a lot of distracting, empty space, and no
real sense of movement. So, what do I do? Well, I combine the amazing piece of ice
from Photo 4 with the composition from Photo 3, giving me photo number 5 - my
final, portfolio image. And that's the process. Now, it works best when you've
got an image in your mind's eye of how you want the photo to look. When I was
here at this location, I thought about what emotions I wanted the photo to have,
and I just kept changing things around and making decisions until I got there.
Now, is it time to close this one out? I'd say so. I took the photos throughout this
video with the iPhone 5, again. This really cheap Canon point-and-shoot
camera. Nikon's most entry-level DSLR. And, naturally, my regular, advanced camera.
I'm not going to tell you that the camera is irrelevant, because it's not.
But, compared to things like balance, simplicity, emotion, and visualization...
it's practically a blip on the horizon.