Photo Tip #4 -- Focus on the Foreground

Consider this when looking for variety in compositional style - create a dominate foreground that connects and leads the eye to the photo's larger subject. You can tell a story, make a portrait, snag a detail and intentionally give the viewer a point of entry into your photograph. Here are a few examples:

In the first photo, Matt Young, director of education for the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus, holds the 1861 sword of John Julius Guthrie, the second commander of the C.S.S. Chattahoochee. This image is a portrait of the sword, but the soldier is an integral visual element to help convey the story of the sword. I pulled the sword handle away from Matt's body, used light from the side and let his face go out of focus just a bit. This creates some separation so the sword can be seen more distinctly. If he had held it close to his body, the sword would have simply blended into his uniform. Creating this space allows the focus to be on the sword and at the same time keeps the 'soldier' present.

This portrait of Northside High basketball players James Vincent, left, and Torin Walker (both 6' 10") brings an environmental element, the basket, into the foreground that then leads the eye directly to the athletes. This also solved the problem of how to make a clean and tight shot given the basket is 10 feet high. Interestingly, this photo didn't run. I selected an image that I shot from below knee level to the young men to accentuate their height.

In this image of Muscogee County Sheriffs pallbearers carrying the casket of their colleague, Deputy Sheriff Meredith "Tag" Rhodes, I framed the photograph of the young officer in the foreground in order to bring his life into the foreground of the story. The bowed heads and their open stride add to the emotion of the moment.

The Habitat for Humanity bag photo is a nice example of how you can to tune into a small detail and use it to spice up a photo - and offer a little different perspective to the scene.

In the above photo, Clubview Elementary students Abby Fitzgerald, left, Katie Smith, and the entire fifth-grade class filled a truck bed with the dozens of boxes of books that they collected for a school in Belize this past spring. Shooting this from the front emphasizes the truckload of books and keeps the teacher's and the youngsters' faces in the picture. To take this picture from behind would have lost them both. And this keeps the entire frame filled with useful information (the crowd of kids, students carrying boxes, teacher, and truck), there is no wasted space or cluttered background.

Try these out. I hope these are ideas that help you in your photo-taking endeavors. And please write in with any questions or comments. Either click on 'comments' at the end of the blog post, or email me at rtrimarchi@ledger-enquirer.com. Thanks.

Robin

Earth and Sky

Last week I promised to find some fun astronomy sites that allow users to find the skies above Columbus and the Chattahoochee Valley. Google Earth* is a virtual globe that allows you to explore the planet from your computer, and it has a sister site called Google Sky. You can move into space from Google Earth by hitting the 'sky button' at the top of the window, or go to 'view' and click on 'switch to sky' in the drop down menu. This flips you from your earth location to the skies above. There is a quick YouTube video with an introduction at http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html.

*(Google Earth is a free download - with advanced versions for purchase - so click on the on the 'Help' link for information about what your computer needs in order to support the program. Hop on the tutorial that gets you on your way. Also visit the Google Earth Blog - http://gearthblog.com/about.html - for good information).

On NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site, (my personal favorite) scroll down the page and check out the archives, the index, the search tab, etc. The Education tab takes you to a fabulous page of astronomy and astrophysics sites (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/edlinks.html). And you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand a lot of this. These are, after all, education sites!! And seriously fun to browse through.

Another space maps site is the Space/Astronomy page on About.com (http://space.about.com/library/weekly/blskymaps.htm). Type 'Sky Maps' into your search engine for an endless listing of sites.

Contact the Coca-Cola Space Science Center (part of Columbus State University) for information on their planetarium, educational programs and astronomy nights. The next two star-gazing evenings are scheduled for Sat. Sept. 6th (8 p.m.) at the Center (701 Front Avenue), and Sat. Sept. 27 (8 p.m.) at FDR State Park. Contact number (706) 649-1477

Oh, that photo at the top is an aerial of my house that I took while shooting for another assignment. How often do we get to take a picture of our house from the sky?

Robin

Science In Our Backyard

While searching for websites that have photos from space of the Columbus and Chattahoochee Valley area, I typed in the U.S. Geological Survey, which is filled with great information and a zillion links to more great information. They call it, "Your source for science you can use." It beats unending cable reruns, and your kids can run amok and dazzle their teachers with their science reports. Type 'Georgia' into the Science In Your Back Yard link, which is where this map is shown with more detail. When I find the space photos, I'll link it up. Until then, check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day site from NASA. You'll love it, and it's easy to find their archived photos and once again, a ton of cool stuff about the stars.

Robin (amateur astronomer and onetime biochemistry major)

Just Checking In ...

... my shoulder is still recovering from surgery, and the Doc has yet to give me the okay to schlep a camera around ... so I've been browsing through my archives in an ongoing attempt to organize the hard drive (never mind all of the negatives), and I came across this photo that was shot while waiting for an assignment to get rolling. These birds were watching me, honestly.

This is also a nice example of how cropping a photo can create a very different image, as compared with leaving it full frame. Let's talk about that in next week's Photo Tip. And I'll see what other photos catch my eye - it's an interesting exercise to look through the files.

One Month to Kickoff!!

For all of you (us) college football fans -- 31 days until the tailgate begins and the marching bands loudly declare -- bring it on!! And, our local high school teams begin practice this coming Monday, Aug. 4.

Okay -- so I'm from Nebraska, for the most part, at least enough to be a Cornhusker - GO BIG RED. But thanks to Dusty Nix, our veteran editorial page editor who bleeds blue and orange, I can be heard echoing WAR EAGLE from September to December. Unless of course, I'm hanging with my Nebraska buddies who live in Atlanta - who bleed HUSKER RED - then I tend to stutter. Like when the Tigers talked back to the Huskers 17-14 in the 2007 Cotton Bowl. But it was a 25-year payback (1982) - that's when Nebraska yawned its way past Auburn 41-7 at Jordan-Hare. It was a "train wreck," according to Dusty. "I couldn't stay for the embalming."

Now -- I'm all for the Bulldogs when they face any Florida team - and if I get to go to a bowl game.

(Insert favorite fight song here)
RT

Wanted: A Beach Day

Greetings! Hope everyone is surviving this crazy Georgia heat and humidity ... All I want to do is sleep. Like my cats.

Or go to the beach. I've decided that one life goal that would be great fun to pursue ... would be to swim in every major body of water on the planet. What you see here is the hike to Red Beach on Santorini, one of the Cyclades Islands of Greece in the Aegean Sea. Red Beach is made of black and red volcanic rocks, and is near the village of Akrotiri, on the south end of the island inside the caldera. The Aegean Sea is a northern arm of the Mediterrean Sea, with the island of Crete forming the geographical division between the two.

To get to Red Beach, you need to park your car ... and walk. Actually, hike. See the little white and red specks that dot the center of the photo? Those are folks headed to the beach. And my friend and I were two of them. You can see umbrellas along the shore to the left. It was magnificant. And the water was cold. Not the warm waters and white sands of Panama City or Gulf Shores or Pensacola, but it is nevertheless a beautiful beach.

A brief note, a friend informed me that she was unable to access this site by typing my name into the search window of the Ledger-Enquirer. This is true. To find Picture Columbus, or any L-E blog posted by our reporters, photographers and editors, go to the strip of tabs under the Ledger-Enquirer.com mast and find 'blog.' Or scroll down the homepage to find the list of blogs.

Photo Tip #3 -- When Your Subjects Face Each Other

When faced with the compositional problem of photographing 'facing planes,' patience and a subtle, keen eye is essential. What I call the 'facing planes' situation is when the two primary subjects of a photo are facing each other - like the gentleman looking at an exhibit hanging on a wall.


If you were to stand in such a way that the wall is to your left, and the man is to your right, and you are centered, you will photograph the two men and the brick wall in the back. It's a difficult situation. Why? Because the image that you want includes both the observer and what the observer is observing. You want more of your subject's face and less profile, plus you want to show what is on the wall. So you need to stand facing the wall just a bit, watch closely, and wait for your human subject to move in such a way that you see more of his or her face - closer to a 45-degree angle and not a 90-degree angle (the two men in the background are 90-degrees to the camera). It's subtle, but there is now an 'interaction' between Mr. Boone and the exhibit. The picture frames and the wall continue past him (and in the background to his right) with with a sense of continuity. The nice arc of light behind his head, the spot of light over the gentlemen to the back, and the simple arched brick over the dark hallway goes black helps this photo's background to be clean, uncluttered and still contribute to the image. The florescent light in the top right corner isn't awful, but I could do without it.

The photo that was taken during a Thanksgiving dinner at the 11th Engineer Battalion dining hall shows a similar problem with the added obstacle of the food line. You can see where I tried my best to not shoot straight down the line (although I mostly did), and also tried to get the officers and soldiers with more than their profile. The photo still has too much dead space down the middle, with my two primary subjects barely in the frame at the edges. The wall and the activity in the background is cluttered with poor light, doesn't add much to the image and takes up a lot of space. (This photo suffers from other problems, too, like bad flash, but that's another topic.)

The painter and her canvas. This one was tough. I'm straddling a small amplifier behind a drum set and other stage stuff (pre-show) while stretching up and over to the left, trying to get some of Eileen's face as well as the finished Ma Rainey painting and the portrait in progress. Fortunately, Ms. Desterno began to work on the lower left part of the painting, so her back was no longer to the camera. Luck gave me the arc in her arm that flows with the arc in Ma Rainey's arm.

In this photo of the college students working on a Habitat for Humanity house, I waited for one of them, hopefully the young man in the center (who eventually complied), to turn slightly so that the picture would not be all backs of heads. His face represents all of their faces as they hammer away at the fascia. The young woman in the foreground helps this photo even more by having a slightly different stance, but not one that breaks the rhythm of their line. It's not a prize-winning image, but it is a successful story-telling shot that conveys how the students who come to Columbus each spring work together on the annual mega-build called the Collegiate Challenge.

Watch for these tough compositional challenges as you shoot. Recognizing them is half the battle, then be patient, watch closely, keep in mind what you want for your photo, change your camera position and, as always, experiment.

Robin