Creating photos with appeal and power is a process and a journey. The great photographers like Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier Bresson (both great teachers as well as masters) explain that it takes knowing your camera mechanics by heart, pre-visualizing a good photo and then waiting patiently for the right moment to push the shutter. Of course they have lots more to say about photography than that, but as a Bay Area portrait photographer and teacher myself, I have a few pointers to share with anyone who wants to improve their photography.

In my last article, I cautioned that one must read the camera manual to avoid the unpredictable results of the automatic setting. Controlling shutter speed and aperture is as critical in 2008 as it was in 1908. Shooting in good lighting conditions is extremely important for any camera, from a view camera to a disposable.  With a ready camera and a location that affords good light you will need to consider the art of composition to frame your potential winning photos.

In other words, you need to know where to point the camera!

You can photograph anything that has enough light for the camera to record a picture (point and shoot!).  But will that photograph be attractive to look at or cause one to think?  Keep in mind that certain general shapes and tones tend to make good photos. We are drawn to repeats like a row of columns, or picket fences. We love geometric shapes; triangular shapes work really well.

And in the two dimensional photographic print there is pleasure in seeing deep color, separation of tones, or objects with patina like rust and bark. For subject matter, it is eye catching to show well-isolated people or animals, flowers, or simple tools that allude to human activity like coffee cups, or shoes left outside a door.

Remember that filling your photo rectangle is just as demanding as filling a canvas with paint. Fit all the interesting things inside the rectangle and exclude that which is not part of your artistic statement. An oil painter would not paint a rose in a pot, and then add a Fed Ex truck in the background to help the composition. But, when photographing in the real world, delivery trucks lurk around every corner. And, the corollary to this is that sign posts seem to grow out of people’s heads like mushrooms after a rain shower. The photo artist minds their backgrounds just as much as their subject, pointing their lens at the good and leaving the distractions behind.

What are your compositional choices for example in capturing a flower in a pot? Well, you could put it off-center with a black paper background; place it in your child’s lap; change the point of view to an aerial perspective; shoot in a sepia color setting; place it  next to a bulldozer to emphasize its fragility; or use your macro setting and only shoot the petals.

Composing is not static, it’s kinetic; you’ve got to move! Get on your knees, hop on a chair. Move the subject into different lighting conditions.

Another composition tip is to stand in relation to your subjects so that there is “optical” separation of things side to side and front to back. If you take a photo of two buildings, angle it so that you see light between them. The two-dimensional photo “reads” better with separate shapes.

Shooting a subject off-center is interesting too. All you have to do is pre-focus on it and then, while keeping your finger down to lock the focus and light reading, reposition the camera so the subject is more to the side and the background fills more space.  Again it is always important to confirm that you are pre-focused.  If you let go of the half-way focus before shooting, the camera will focus again on something else in the center. That gives camera lag and often puts the main interest out of focus, a disappointing result.

And lastly, the grand daddy of all compositional tips, shoot at “the decisive moment”. This refers to scenes in the real world that have moving objects. Waiting for a moving subject to come clearly into your composition, is the mark of a patient, confident photographer and Doisneau’s does just that in his famous shot of a proud French boy with his wine bottles, rounding the corner at that magic moment in time. It takes persistence, and luck too, but like the lotto, you’ve got to play to win, so get out there and find that perfect photo of your own.