Perspective. When you need to have clarity. Get some. With a view that some may find absurd, there is still a lot to be said for the lack of clarity despite the abundance of it.

When you are all bunched up and have nowhere to go - sometimes you need to wait, and take your chances. You could then either be eaten or simply wither away into nothingness.

Between the Dark and the Light

Supposing, somewhere between the dark and the light, if there were to be a way to manage the ambiguities that clutter the space around us ....could this probably be that way?

The Format

When you speak about format what is meant is whether you hold the camera the normal way or whether you twist your arm so that the camera goes through 90 degrees to frame your subject.

Although the size of the image sensor varies from camera to camera, the image shape is always rectangular. In most cameras the proportions of the images fall into one of groups. One is those that have aspect ratios of 3:2, with two sides that are 50 percent longer than the others. These are the same proportions used by 35mm film cameras. Then there are those that use an aspect ratio of 4:3, where the long side is one-third longer than the others.

When you shoot with the longer side along the horizontal, which is the more natural thing to do, it is referred to as the landscape format. When you turn the camera and use the long side as the vertical side it is referred to as the portrait format.

Because of the way digital cameras are designed, it is much easier to shoot (and view) horizontal format shots than vertical ones. But it is important that you check to see if the subject could be framed better by rotating the camera. This is a good habit to get into. It might feel uncomfortable using the camera this way but you will get used to it.

Some subjects, such as full-length portraits, or shots of tall towers, trees, arches, would likely work better with more vertical picture space. However this is not a rule and there is no way to categorize what works better with which format. It is just something that you will need to figure out by actually viewing and framing the subject before shooting. For example, some portraits are far better framed with the landscape format, and some landscape portraits may be more simply composed using the vertical format.

The photograph above taken from the fort at Murud (about 3 hours drive from Mumbai) which frames a boat through an arch in the fort worked better for me in the portrait format than in the landscape format.

One thing is for sure, once you get into the habit of experimenting and trying the different formats, you could get some interesting shots and you will add variety to your pictures.

Composition

Composition. Any time you want to make a picture, you have to consider a couple of things. What you want to be in the picture. And more importantly what you want to leave out of the picture. Put another way, it is not just about what you place within the frame of the camera’s viewfinder; just as important is what you decide to leave out of the picture. We are surrounded by a cluttered world, take a look around and you will see.

Take any scene, and however photogenic the location, there are large parts of the scene which you would just not want to include in the scene. Examples would be large electric poles jutting up into the sky, overhead wires, junk dumped outside, unwanted protrusions of any kind disrupting the scene, or just extra people and things cluttering the vicinity around your subject of interest. This we do not want to include in the scene. If we do as many point-and-shoot photographers do, just shoot what we see before us, we are likely to end up with a disappointing image. The shot fails because it lacks emphasis.

What you have to remember is this. The first rule of composition - try to simplify the scene. Your eye is unique in a way - it can scan this way and that and pick out objects of interest to look at for longer than others. The camera cannot do this – it shows everything. Unlike a painter, you cant just leave out the distracting, unwanted, elements. What you will need to do is use the lens and the viewpoint to create an image that is as free from mess as possible. Think of the picture as a story, and use composition to make the tale as easy to understand as you can.

In most cases your pictures will become stronger if you frame the shot so that there is only one main focal point. Often, you can frame a subject so that it appears alone in the frame; however, if you include further elements, these should complement the main subject, adding to the detail of the story, rather than competing for our attention.

Texture

Texture is the picture element which tells you what a subject would be like to feel. It gives the picture that quality which helps you differentiate the rough from the smooth, to tell if it would be soft or hard. It is the indentations on the surface that give this information, and it is their presence in a picture which can be shown up by a pattern of shading.

Texture is, in a sense, just like form, only on a smaller scale. Both rely on lighting to provide shadows and highlights across the surface of the subject. For texture, you would get the maximum benefit if you can getthe pits and furrows of the surface to be in the deepest shade possible. This is possible if you use raking light which is light that hits the surface from as oblique an angle as possible. If you can manage side-lighting this could be the perfect solution. And for vertical surfaces, lighting that is directly overhead (top-lighting) can also work well.

Because texture tends to be found on a minimum scale, and relies on good resolution to be seen, it is best accentuated by getting in close to the subject, otherwise the texture can be lost. Sometimes this will mean using a long telephoto zoom setting, but more frequently it involves whatever macro facilities you have available to decrease the focusing distance. Once you have the picture cropped in tight, simple subjects such as the grain of a piece of wood, or the peeling paint on a window, or the fibres ina bath towel - all can make fascinating abstract studies.

Pattern

If you take a composition and consider all the structural elements within it, perhaps the least obvious to appreciate within it would be pattern. Although we all understand what pattern means, it is kind of hard to see how it is relevant to picture-taking.

There’s patterns all around us – not just on the wallpaper on your screen, tiles on your floor or the shirt you may be wearing. It is found in nature; in the repeated shapes of leaves on a tree, or the rows of plants in an estate . It is found in the bricks of every wall, and even in junkyards. Take how grocery shelves are stacked, or the contents of every item or packet that you find there. Pattern is so much around us that, for most of the time, we just don’t notice it.

And it is this level of comfort that we have with patterns that can be used as a useful tool in compositions. By placing similar or identical subjects within the same frame, we can create a busy image, but the arrangement is still simple enough to result in a successful shot.

You can use the selective viewpoint of the camera so that pattern can be isolated in a such a way that it can be seen afresh. You could experiment to any extent – using a zoom and closing in sufficiently, even a pile of empty bottles or a heap of paperclips can be made to look interesting.

At the same time, pattern that is too uniform, can end up looking rather dull, so you need to find ways to present the pattern in an interesting way. You could use it as just one of the compositional elements to create a backdrop or a foreground that acts as a foil to something else in the frame. You could also look at ways to break down the pattern, for example, a pile of apples could be made more photogenic by using a wide-angle lens and shooting up close so one of the apples appears larger than the others, or you could try putting a red apple in a pile of green apples so that you have an obvious focal point for the picture.

As far as lighting for patterns goes, there is no set, “ideal” lighting for patterns, as this relies on repetition of one or more of the other elements. Whether the pattern relies more on repeating outlines, forms, textural detail, or color will help decide the best lighting setup.