Digital Photography and Imaging / Week 2

10.04.23 / Week 2
Name: ALYSSA AISYAH BINTI 'ARIEF NASRAN (0364017)
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Digital Photography and Imaging (GCD61204) / Section 1

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LECTURES

Introduction to Composition

Introduction to Basic Composition

This week we were introduced to the fundamental elements and basics of what make up a good composition.

Focal Point: A key element to any good composition is a strong focal point, as it helps your viewers’ eyes naturally settle on the important pieces of your design first.

Fig 1.0 Focal Point

Scale & Hierarchy: Scale is often used to help communicate hierarchy by drawing attention toward and away from certain elements, thus signifying their importance to the communication.

Fig 1.1 Scale & Hierarchy

Balance The Elements: A good technique for mastering asymmetrical balance is to think of each element as having a ‘weight’ to it. Smaller objects might ‘weigh’ less than larger objects, and heavily textured elements might ‘weigh’ more than flatly colored elements.

Fig 1.2 Balance The Elements

White Space: White space is mostly known as “empty space” to balance up the main focus of a composition. White space when used strategically can help boost your design’s clarity and overall look by balancing out the more complicated and busy parts of your composition with space that helps your design to breathe.

Fig 1.3 White Space

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds: The process of dividing an image into thirds, using two horizontal and two vertical lines. This imaginary grid yields nine parts with four intersection points.

Fig 1.4 Rule of Thirds

When you position the most important elements of your image at these intersection points, you produce a much more natural image. It is also suggested that any horizon is placed on either the top horizontal line or bottom horizontal line.

The Rule of Thirds is a way to: 

• Use composition techniques that are in line with what’s naturally pleasing to the eye. 
• Creatively use negative space.
• Create conversation between the subject and background.

Fig 1.5 Rule of Thirds Example

Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio: A mathematical ratio commonly found in nature, and when used in a design, it fosters organic and natural-looking compositions that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. In design, the Golden Ratio boils down to aesthetics — creating and appreciating a sense of beauty through harmony and proportion. When applied to design, the Golden Ratio provides a sense of artistry

Fig 1.6 Golden Ratio 

Fig 1.7 Golden Ratio Example 1

The Golden Ratio is also a useful guideline for determining dimensions of the layout. One very simple way to apply the Golden Ratio is to set your dimensions to 1:1.618

Fig 1.8 Golden Ratio Example 2

Composition / Framing & Cropping

Single: Features 1 character alone in a frame, the individual character is the primary focus. There are two ways to frame a single.

• Clean Single: When no part of any other character is visible in frame, best used when trying to convey a characters isolation.

• Dirty Single: Includes a limited presence of another character in the frame.

Two Shot: When 2 characters are visible together in 1 frame.

• Orientation can vary, but to be considered a two shot, both faces must be clearly visible.
• The two shot is about creating a visual relationship between the two characters, whether affectionate, contentious, or even imaginary.

X-Number Shot: When more characters are added to the frame the terminology adjusts -> e.g. Three Shot, Four Shot, Five Shot etc.

Crowd Shot: S shot consisting of many characters in a single frame, usually when there are too many characters to count.

Over The Shoulder: The most common and useful way of covering a conversation.

• Acts as a hybrid of a single and a two shot.
• Similar to the single, focusing on one character at a time.
• With this angle, it is able to capture perspectives of both sides, and a sense of inclusion in the moment.

POV: When you want the audience to experience the perspective of a character, it can be effective to frame up a point of view shot.

• The idea of a POV can cover a wide range of perspectives -> e.g. a person, an alien, a camera, a shark, etc.
• In many cases POV shots are also paired with POV audio so we can see what the characters see, and hear what they hear.

Insert: Going extremely tight on a detail, zooming and focusing onto the primary object.

• The way the information is framed is often even more important than how it is framed on the screen
• Inserts can be combined with many different shots -> e.g. 1st-person perspective, 3rd person perspective, hybrid frame, etc.

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TUTORIAL

Composition Studies

Collage Elements Layering & Composition

In this week's tutorial Mr Fauzi demonstrated how to compose a visually appealing physical collage using the fundamental techniques of collage design. Below details the the process.

1. Explore and search for interesting graphics from old magazines
2. Cut the selection area neatly and trim the edges
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2
4. Find an interesting background canvas
5. Start composing all the design elements together
6. Start with the focal point to hold the other elements
7. Arrange based on visual hierarchy 
8. Take a photo of the final composition for reference
9. Glue the elements down based on the reference
10. Done

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INSTRUCTIONS

 

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PRACTICAL

Collage Design Elements

In this week's practical we were instructed to choose and identify our collage's design elements to be cut out from various magazines/paper/etc and compose it into our own concept & story, coming up with 3 different pre-compositions to later choose as our final collage.

In each pre-composition for the 3 collages, I decided to use the character zero from drakengard as I did not have access to magazines at the time, so I had to print out my elements and this allowed for more artistic freedom as well, thus I chose her as a character as I had lots of dried flowers from leftover projects I planned to use for this task, and zero the character also was quite monochromatic in design + had a flower in one eye, so there was some shared elements (the flowers) that could easily blend in with the materials I had already, and her being more monochromatic in colour allowed for the other elements to be the pop of colour in the design which can make for an interesting contrast in the composition as you usually see the focal points being the most colourful element in a composition. All extra other 3D materials that I have used in this task were recycled materials I had leftovers of from old projects of mine. 

Pre Composition #1

Fig 1.9 Pre Composition 1

Explanation: I used dried flowers at the edge of canvas on the top left and bottom right and placed the character there as well to look as if she had bloomed from the flowers, the background is mostly made up of torn wallpaper designs and old collage letters, I also used some white ribbons and cardboard hearts I had from a leftover arts and crafts project I had, while the words come from a book.

Pre Composition #2

Fig 2.0 Pre Composition 2

Explanation: In this design I used more dried flowers I + faux plastic ones + flower stickers, some dried coloured leaves, and a torn watercolour background- the quote is part of some book pages which I had cut out from, and as zero had a flower blooming from her eye in her original character design, I decided to add flowers there too to give emphasis to her original design.

Pre Composition #3

Fig 2.1 Pre Composition 3

Explanation: In this last design, I used more of the dried flowers I had and wanted to explore the idea of having the flowers bloom from her eye as I really liked how it emphasized her original design, thus I arranged the flowers in a way where it looked as if they were also dissipating going from the largest flowers to smaller ones as it gets further away from her eye, I also used some of the same wallpaper/watercolour backgrounds I had printed out and some coloured dried leaves, and lastly, the quote was cut from 2 different book pages.