Transcription
Ansel Adams once said that there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. Having an idea of how to create photographs whose meaning is crystal clear to the viewer will go a long way to giving your images more impact. If you want to be able to better communicate through your photography, I'm going to share with you five vital building blocks of visual communication.
In this episode, you're going to learn how to seek out and recognize the critical visual elements of line, shape, form, texture, and color.
How's it going? I'm Alex, and welcome to this episode of The Art of Seeing. If you're new to the series and would like to start from the beginning, I've put up a playlist on the screen right there for you right now. So all you need to do is just click there.
When you go to visit the doctor, they don't just poke around until they find something wrong with you. They're looking for symptoms. But what should a photographer be looking for when trying to take a photograph?
When we look at the world through our eyes, the mind tries to identify what we see. We seek out line, shape, texture, form, and color. Just like the way we use nouns and verbs in our speech, we use these elements in our visual language. If you want to be able to speak fluently through your photography, you have to become competent in linking these parts of your photographic speech together.
No one wants to be the photographer who has to point at things in their images and say, "Look right there! You see the way the shadow makes an interesting shape on the ground? That's what makes the photograph work." If you need to do that, then the photograph hasn't really worked, has it?
Like when we talk and combine nouns, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions, we can create something special. In photography, we do the same by combining texture, shape, color, form, and line. When you understand how these elements work, you'll be ready to use them when unusual events happen in front of you.
Imagine the impact a genuine photograph from the Mars rover would have if it showed a little alien peeking over a hilltop in the distance. It probably wouldn't be the most aesthetically pleasing photograph in the world, but its monumental impact will be felt around the world.
Now consider a photograph that was equally mind-blowing when it was first seen and how the astronaut was aware of how to capture not only this unusual event but also in an aesthetically pleasing way. I never really heard of NASA specifically giving astronauts photography lessons, but they must have done something.
Because despite the pressure these guys were under during their missions, they still managed to recognize and, more importantly, photograph well the scenes that they were confronted with. This is what happens when you become fluent in the language of photography, so it becomes second nature.
Of course, your photograph of an unusual event doesn't need to be quite this monumental. It could be as simple as a spider spinning a web in the evening light. It could be a herd of deer walking across the field in the early morning mist. No matter what you see, try and photograph it in an aesthetically pleasing way as much as you can.
Don't just rely on the uniqueness of the scene in front of you to carry that picture. Make use of all these elements that we're going to learn today.
Possibly one of the first visual elements we learn about when looking at art is line. Lines are the workhorse of visual literature, and they can be thick or thin, long or short, straight, curved, explicit, implicit, horizontal, vertical, or oblique. Lines lead, they separate, they connect, they stabilize, and they destabilize. Lines can convey mood and action.
Horizontal and vertical lines tend to have a formal state to them and a bit of stability. Of course, oblique lines, as anybody's trip down the stairs can attest, are quite the opposite and feel quite dynamic. S-shaped lines apparently are supposed to be tranquil, although how many of us would find the S of a coiled-up snake to be a tranquil picture?
That's a really good example of how context in photography can be so important. When looking at the scene, think about how the lines inside that scene interact, the way the horizon can inform the way that you read the photograph. You need to be aware of lines and how they shape our moods.
Lines, of course, can form and outline what we call shape. Shape is two-dimensional, and shape helps our eyes to quickly identify many objects. Even if you see just a partial outline of a cat, a car, or a face, it's easy to identify what those things are.
Now, if you're only just shown some color or texture, things become a lot harder to identify than it is with a shape. In our mind, we tend to hold a defined shape as an ideal for a particular object. If you look at your hand or you think about your hand, you'll probably picture it as a palm with your fingers splayed out.
If you hold your hand perpendicular to the ground, you will only see the edge of your hand. Point your fingertips towards you, and again your hand looks different. Do you see how you change the shape of an object? By doing so, you can create intrigue.
The purest of all shapes is a silhouette, and a silhouette strips away all of the texture from the form and the color, just leaving a bare-bones shape that teases the viewer's imagination. Silhouettes are a particularly strong element because they allow the viewer—and indeed they force the viewer—to draw heavily on their own experiences to fill in those details.
Shapes are strongest when there is a clear separation of them from the background. You can also draw attention to shape by using color contrast, and the most obvious example of this, of course, is lipstick.
Improving your photography is a lifelong journey. No matter how long you've been interested in creating photographs, you can always learn new things. I've been interested in photography since I was about five or so, so that's almost 40 years ago now, and I'm still learning new things every day.
If you'd like to help other people improve their photography with these episodes, please give the video a thumbs up. This way, YouTube will know to suggest it to more people like you who are keen to get better at their photography.
If shape defines the world in two dimensions, then form reveals it in three dimensions. It adds volume and depth to the height and width of a shape. Shape identifies those lips we mentioned earlier, but form conveys their fullness.
The shape of a pepper by itself simply says to your mind that this is a pepper, but when you render it with form, you create a compelling realism that almost convinces the viewer to reach out and take a bite of that crunchy vegetable.
Different types of forms create different responses. The forms of objects that we can hold in our hands, like a coffee cup, a telephone, or a muffin, generally give us a stronger physical response. Objects that we can't hold in our hands, like a house or a mountain, gentle curves in forms—which are often suggestive of the human body—give us a pleasant feeling inside.
Hard angular forms, or staircases, and anything that's typical of what we find in nature tends to provoke a different feeling, quite often analytical and almost aggressive in nature. The key to showing volume or depth of form is our old friend, the shadow. Without shadow, there is no shading, and without shading, there is no form.
Choose your light carefully, so the way that it picks out the varying surface of the subject creates form. Once you've created that form, you can then manipulate it to suit your goals in your photograph.
Texture is closely related to form, and just as highlighting form gives an immediacy to subjects, highlighting its texture helps the subject become real. Texture teases us, and when you look at it, you can feel it in your mind, but you can never actually touch it.
Touching is intimate, and it invokes sensations and feelings within us that are associated with that texture that you're looking at. Think about what happens when you bite into an apple, for example, and your tongue feels the texture of the flesh inside and reports that sharp taste to your brain.
When you walk across the beach on a summer's day, you don't just feel the sand gritty between your toes, but there's also a quick burst of heat radiating up with each footstep. So it is with texture in a photograph. Not only does it add visual interest, but it makes your mind think of various sensations.
Texture is everywhere. Recognize and learn how to use it to inform the sensations within your photographs. The power of color is undisputed. Color affects the mind and body. Red excites, blue calms, and green soothes.
You just have to look at nature to see the power of color as an attraction at work. Daffodils and roses have these bright colors to attract insects, and we humans are also using bright colors to draw attention. But subtle colors shouldn't be overlooked.
Subdued color doesn't necessarily have to be dull. Subtle color can lead your photographs to a contemplative, melancholic, or almost introspective feel when handled with care. Bold and bright colors can spotlight and stimulate.
You want to handle them with care because bold and bright colors need to be treated simply. The best way to do this is to only take one or two colors and shape those into graphic designs by using framings and viewpoints to exclude extraneous details.
If you're using bold colors, more than two of them will tend to overwhelm and confuse. If this is the effect you're going for, then by all means do so. But if you don't want to confuse the viewer, then stay away from using too many bold colors.
When you are able to combine all of these elements together, you're going to get rid of that fuzzy concept that Ansel Adams was talking about. It's going to make your photographs have more of a purpose, and that way they're also going to have more impact for the viewer.
In the next episode, we're going to look at how size and depth can also be harnessed and used to inform the viewer in your photographs. This video is part of a series on learning how to improve the way that you see the world.
To watch from the beginning, I've put the playlist up on screen. All you need to do is just click right over there. Thanks ever so much for joining me, and I will see you again soon.