The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos: 83 Composition Tools from the Masters (Photography Book)
By Marc Silber
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About this ebook
Learn the secrets to composition: There's a common misconception that composition is mysterious and that only certain people have that natural gift for the techniques involved. The truth is that composition involves a set of skills that you can master. Just as you can use cookbook recipes to make your favorite meal―you don't have to be a famous French chef―you also can take amazing photos by just following a recipe!
Easy-to-follow photography composition recipes: Marc Silber has spent years studying the works of masters and interviewing some of the biggest names in photography. Now he can provide you with simple and easy-to-follow recipes for creating photographs that you and others will love! The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos puts at your fingertips ideas for improving your skills by giving you easy-to-follow "recipes" that will improve your photography right now! Take your photography to the next level: Composition is one of the biggest keys to creating photos that others will love. No matter what kind of camera or smartphone you're using, you can take your photography to the next level and beyond by learning composition tools and secrets known to the masters of the art.
Carry The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos in your camera bag: The book is compact in size and easy to carry with you, so you can flip to the look you want and follow the recipe for creating an image that inspires you. Use it when you're out photographing to get new ideas and inspiration. You'll be able to rapidly up you photography game by learning the skills in Picture Perfect Processes.
Key benefits of owning The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos include:
- Taking better photographs today by learning the keys to composition
- Having quick and easy to follow "recipes" for composition at your fingertips
- Learning the secrets of composition from the masters of classical art and photography
Marc Silber
Marc Silber is the author of the bestselling book Advancing Your Photography and an award-winning professional video producer, photographer, and photography educator who has been successfully working in the field for decades. Marc combines his passion for the visual art of photography with his love of life. He started out learning darkroom skills and the basics of photography at the legendary Peninsula School in Menlo Park, CA in the ’60s, and moved on to hone his skills to professional standards at the famed San Francisco Art Institute, one of the oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in art and photography in the United States. Since then, Marc has been a dedicated educator. He began his teaching career at the age of nineteen at the National Outdoor Leadership School, teaching mountaineering. When teaching a life-or-death subject such as mountaineering, one learns how to make sure the students understand the material. When Marc moved into teaching photography in workshops all over the country, he became renowned as an engaging and helpful speaker and coach, as his greatest joy comes from helping others. Most recently, Marc has embraced the digital age with a highly popular YouTube show also named Advancing Your Photography, which has won several Telly Awards and other recognition for his work there. This new book on composition, The Secrets to Taking Amazing Photos, is a distillation of all the pro tips and wisdom from his YouTube series, coupled with his research of the master artists in a format you can take with you and refer to constantly when you are out creating your photographs.
Read more from Marc Silber
The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos: 83 Composition Tools from the Masters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Advancing Your Photography: Secrets to Making Photographs that You and Others Will Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos
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- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Pages 20 onward want render on my tablet, probably due to the images format.
Book preview
The Secrets to Creating Amazing Photos - Marc Silber
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
How to Use This Book to Create Amazing Photos
Acknowledgements
PART ONE:
FUNDAMENTAL COMPOSITION GUIDES AND TOOLS
1.Framing: Put an Edge around It
2.Landscape Format
3.Portrait Format
4.Turn at an Angle
5.Points of Thirds
6.Geometry Can be a Pleasure
7.Leading Lines Direct Attention
8.Diagonal Lines Can Add Movement, Interest, and Vitality.
9.Symmetry Can Delight the Eye
10.Capturing the Decisive Moment
11.Punctuation Points In your Photographs
12.Capture a Gesture at the Decisive Moment
13.Angles Are Like an Author’s Choice of Words
14.Viewpoint: How You See Your Subject
15.Steelyard Composition Is Balanced
16.L
Shape Composition
17.Grouped Shape Composition
18.Three Spot Composition
19.Silhouette Composition
20.Tunnel Composition
21.Patterns Can Be Engaging
22.The Golden Ratio Proportions
23.S-Curve Composition Leads the Eye Gracefully
24.Circular or O
Composition Invites the Eye to Stay Within
25.U-Composition Invites You to Look Within
26.Triangle Composition Provides Stability and Strength
27.Radiating Lines Lead to the Center of Interest
28.Cross Composition and Eye Movement
29.Balance Scale Composition
30.Find Contrast In Your Image
31.Fill the Frame by Getting Close to Your Subjects
32.Pull Back to Capture the Story
33.Place Dominant Eye in the Center of Photo
34.Use Color as a Powerful Composition Tool
PART TWO:
COMPOSITION LINES THAT CONVEY MOODS IN YOUR IMAGE
Mood Lines Convey Feelings or States of Mind
35.Active
36.Passive
37.Structural, solid, strong
38.Nonstructural, fluid, soft
39.Stable
40.Unstable
41.Stable
42.Unstable
43.Positive, bold, forceful
44.Tenuous, uncertain, wavering
45.The vertical—noble, dramatic, inspirational, aspiring
46.The horizontal—earthy, calm, mudane, satisfied
47.Primitive, simple, bold
48.Effusive
49.Flamboyant
50.Refined
51.Jagged, brutal, hard, vigorous, masculine, picturesque
52.Curvilinear, tender, soft, pleasant, feminine, beautiful
53.Rough, rasping, grating
54.Smooth, swelling, sliding
55.Decreasing, contracting
56.Increasing, expanding
57.Dynamic
58.Static, focal, fixed
59.In motion
60.Meandering, casual, relaxed, interesting, human
61.Erratic, bumbling, chaotic, confused
62.Logical, planned, orderly
63.Flowing, rolling
64.Formal, priestly, imperious, dogmatic
65.Rising, optimistic, successful, happy
66.Falling, pessimistic, defeated, depressed
67.Indecisive, weak
68.Progressive
69.Regressive
70.Rise, attainment with effort, improvement
71.Fall, sinking without effort, improvement
72.Indirect, plodding
73.Concentrating, assembling
74.Dispersing, Fleeing
75.Broken, interrupted, severed
76.Direct, sure, forceful, with purpose
77.Opposing
78.Connecting crossing
79.Parallel, opposing with harmony
80.Excited, nervous, jittery
81.Opposing with friction
82.Diverging, dividing
83.Growing, developing
PART THREE:
PUTTING YOUR TOOLS TOGETHER AND FINAL TIPS
Endnotes
About the Author
Preface
A picture is a poem without words
—Horace, Roman lyric poet
No matter what type of camera you’re using, and this most definitely includes smartphones, there are two key skills you must master to make creative photos that you and others will love: how you compose your image, coupled with your use of light.
These skills have been with us ever since the first caveman had a breakthrough and figured out that scratches on a cave wall could communicate to others what he saw or imagined.
This breakthrough of picture making, and others that followed, opened the way to a most powerful urge we all share: to tell our stories to others. It must have been an exhilarating moment when that door began to open and, like our modern tech breakthroughs, it no doubt spread through the other caves at lightning speed! Imagine you and I in a cave, now having the ability to tell each other about what we each saw and even felt. Since we were using pictures, we were able to break though the communication barriers of our limited language.
From that moment, man had a superior communication system to all other life forms on the planet: as individuals, groups, and as a species we could now tell stories to each other in picture form.
But soon, it was not enough to just crudely scratch. Being what we are, man is always looking for the secrets to effectively tell stories. From scratches to rock art, they kept pushing the available technology further and further. And this very definitely embraced composition: how these pictures depicted and reflected life all around them.
Moving forward through the ages, all advances of picture making built on and expanded these initial breakthroughs. The urge to make pictures and share them with others runs deep within mankind. When you take the very long view, is it any surprise to see the explosions we’ve witnessed with our modern
picture sharing outlets of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and whatever else has come along by the time you read this?
When photography was first being developed in the mid-nineteenth century, by early pioneers such as Louis Daguerre who invented the daguerreotype,
exposure time could be about fifty seconds to ten minutes, and the developing process was very complex. These early versions of photography were complicated and cumbersome, so the average person was not going to go through the painstaking process to make a single photograph of sometimes questionable quality. It was easier to stick with drawing, sketching, or possibly painting as the available technologies of the common person at the time.
A major breakthrough came when George Eastman (who went on to found Kodak in 1888) embraced photography and figured out a means to put a camera in the hands of anyone in the western world, have them take photographs, and then make prints easily and quickly. This again resonated deeply and it seemed that everyone soon had a camera. From the release of the inexpensive Kodak Brownie
in 1900, to the much more sophisticated models, photography had become mainstream, which was a major advance in story telling and sharing through pictures.
This boom in photography kept right on going like a massive ocean swell that surfers love so much: a long beautiful ride—that is, up until