Photographic Composition 101 Part I: Put It in a Frame

 

Above are two photographs of the beautiful, old Starr's Mill, a few miles south of Fayetteville, Georgia. They were taken at different times and with different cameras, however, looking at each file at high magnification, there appears to be no difference in photographic quality.

Which one do you prefer? Can you say why?

Although the second photo is sharp and has beautiful light and color, most people prefer the first one, even though many probably could not say why. The mill looks great in the second one, but there's no feeling of depth and no place for your eye to rest. In the first one, the tree on the right, the rocks on the shore, and the dam all combine to lead the eye to the mill. They form a frame around it,  which gives the picture a a sense of depth and dimensionality.

"Framing" a photo is a very effective compositional technique, and one I use a lot. In this photograph of Short's Mill near Clarkesville, Georgia, the mill is actually only a small part of the picture, yet the stone ledge, flowing water, and autumn tree form a frame to lead the eye to the old mill. 

There many ways to put the subject of your photograph in a frame. For instance, in this photo of a children's Sunday School class, the way the children's heads are turned direct the viewer's eye to the teacher and the child she is speaking to. 

I don't use this technique of framing for every shot, of course, but I think if you learn to look for opportunities to put a frame in your pictures it will improve your photography.

Photographs and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Birthing a Book

Chicken Farmer Danny Gandy

"This is not a fighting cock" 

US Hwy 41, Cook County

Continued from previous post. . .

Over the next year or two I made a few day-trips to round out my coverage as the book began to take shape in my mind. I narrowed down the selection of photographs, wrote an introduction, a number of brief essays to go with some of the pictures, and asked my son Rob, a really fine writer, to write a foreword.

Then I loaded everything on a flash drive and took it to my long-time friend Michael Largent, who knows everything there is to know about design. It was amazing to watch him as he sequenced the pictures and put them all in order with the text and the captions -- all in one day!

Your Yard Sale Place

GA Hwy 32, Bacon County

 

We sent it off to Blurb.com, an online printer, and a few weeks later I had in my hands a beautiful, 12 by 12-inch, 144-page book. You can see it for yourself at https://www.blurb.com/books/4973943-georgia-a-backroads-portrait.

All the photographs in this post and the previous one are in the book, along with nearly 130 more. If you would like to have a copy, contact me at djphoto@vol.com or send a text message to 423-240-2324.

Disclaimer: I must tell you that since the book is a limited edition and I only have a few printed at a time, it is not cheap.

I will probably never sell enough to recover what I've already invested, but I wanted to create a visual ode to Georgia, the state where I lived for 44 years.

Photographs and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

Around Georgia with a Camera

Chaise Lounge

U.S. 129, Irwin County

 

Sorry this post is a day late. Like I said, sometimes life gets in the way.

In 2004 I begin taking occasional day-trips around north Georgia, looking for whatever interesting things I could find to photograph. In 2010 I took some of the money I earned from an architectural job and spent a week driving around the perimeter of Georgia to see if I could find enough interesting photos to complete the book I had in mind.

Accordingly, on May 5th I laid down the back seats of my 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan, put in an air mattress, a sleeping bag, and some clothes, and set out on my quest.

Since I had already covered north Georgia pretty thoroughly, I headed to the east central part of the state looking for whatever I could find.

Please keep in mind what I've said several times on this blog, that the most important ability in photography is the ability to notice things. Unfortunately, I'm kinda slow, so the way this process works for me is that I see something, go on down the road for a half-mile or so while the thought slowly penetrates my brain, "Hey, that might make a good photo!" and then search for a place to turn around, or, if the road is deserted, a wide spot where I can make a U-turn.

Satellite Dish

Georgia Highway 22, Taliferro County

 

 I worked my way down the east side of Georgia, then across the bottom of the state, then up the west side about as far as Butler, which is west of Macon. At that point I had used up my allotted time for the trip and went home. A few weeks later I made a three-day trip down the west side of the state as far as Warm Springs to complete the circuit.

Crazy Spider

Georgia Highway 193, Walker County

 

 So how was it, as a then-72-year-old man, sleeping in my van for a week? Actually, it was fine. I mostly slept in WalMart parking lots, although I slept one night at a truck stop. That was kinda noisy. Otherwise, I was very comfortable and slept well. I brought with me a small, battery-powered fan, in case the nights were hot, but only used it one time.

All the photographs in this post were made with the original Canon EOS 5D (a great camera -- I used it for eight years) and various Canon lenses. I also carried  a Canon EOS 20D as backup, but didn't use it much. 

To be continued. . .

Photographs and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

 

Connectivity Revisited

The Watcher on the Wall

Syracuse, New York, 1974

This photograph has absolutely nothing to do with the post below.

But I don't want miss an opportunity to point out that the most

important ability in photography is the ability to notice things.

 

Back in July I wrote about a persistent problem in RV living -- connectivity. You can read about it here. Most of us are at least some what dependent on our cell phones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs for social interaction, work, and entertainment, Those of us who live in RVs have more difficulty with connectivity because we don't have landlines, cable is not available in all campgrounds, and satellite reception is expensive and requires special equipment. The wifi provided in most campgrounds, if they have it all, is miserably slow.

After some experimentation, the solution we found for our connectivity problem was to use two cell-phone carriers. Louise and I have our cell phone service with Consumer Cellular. We also have a third line with them which feeds into the chip in a little mobile hotspot device we ordered from Amazon, The combination provides us with 50 gigs of data and costs about $96 a month,

The other part of the solution is the 100 gigs of data we get from T-Mobile for only $50 per month and which we access through another mobile hotspot.

We use the T-Mobile data for streaming TV and our Apple computers. My PC (main computer), for some reason will only run on Consumer Cellular data. We can use either for phones and iPads.

So this pretty much solved our connectivity problems. Except one.

When someone breaks a hip and spends a lot of time in front of the TV streaming NCIS, all bets are off! (Also, I have to confess to participating in binge-watching The Good Witch.) 

All this resulted in hitting the dreaded slowdown on the 20th for T-Mobile and the 24th for Consumer Cellular. Last night it was so bad I couldn't post. So that's why you're getting this in the afternoon rather than this morning.

Photographs and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone