Thinking about space in compositions

Hosted by Daniel j Gregory

February 25, 2019

Episode Number:

If you have ever taken or seen a pole coming out of someone’s head in a photograph, you know the problem with making a 3D world appear on a 2D medium.

When we compress three-dimensional space into two, things that should have distance between them are reduced or disappear. In some cases, they might even seem farther apart than they are. Either way, as photographers our goal is to be able to understand better how to tell the story we want in our image and use the spatial effect to our advantage.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how to think about and approach foreground, mid-ground and background areas of your photograph. Starting by focusing on where the subject or subject matter is in the picture and how to make sure the elements of light, tone, color, and shape all help separate the subject from the environment or place it in the environment. I also talk about how to make sure each object in the frame has the appropriate space around them so the can breathe and allow for a movement of light, tone, and texture to build depth into the image.

Finally, I have an exercise for you to do that should hopefully help you see and separate objects and the various background and foreground objects.

Don’t forget if you are a fan of the podcast, you can always leave a review or drop me a line with any topics you might be interested in hearing about.

Gear used in podcast

One of the questions I get asked frequently is what sort of equipment do I use to record my podcast. I have used a variety of equipment in the three years that I have been recording, but here is the current list of equipment that I am using. Also as an FYI and full disclosure, the links are affiliate links to Amazon.

Rode Procaster XLR microphone
Rode Boom Arm
Rode PSM Shockmount
All three Rode components a kit
Focusrite Scarlet 2i2
Adobe Audition (part of creative cloud subscription)
LogicPro X
Macbook Pro
OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock
Headphones

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