Pro Pix Tips: Picture composition is a major part of a photography that separate casual photographers from the more advanced photographers (how's that for a little diplomacy). One of the most basic rules of composition is called "the rule of thirds". Now I could go into a great deal of rambling but instead let's just cut to the heart of the matter. Positioning the subject of your picture is tied to what is appealing to the human eye. Rarely does the placing of your subject look the best or most appealing to the eye when the subject is place directly in the center of the shot. So how do we get the picture to be more eye appealing? It starts with tic-tac-toe. Take a piece of paper and draw a tic-tac-toe playing board. Now draw a box around the playing board to represent the view finder of your camera. Note how the view finder is divided into thirds horizontally and thirds vertically. Where any horizontal line crosses a vertical line that is a point where a subject can be placed in the picture and be a more appealing placement to the human eye. Any point of interest can be placed at any of these points and will fit in the rule of thirds for picture composition. One additional point here is if the point of interest is a living thing that has the ability to look at or face something. These should face into the picture and not out of them. If they are looking out of the picture the viewer of the picture will be left with a sense of question or confusion as they wonder what the subject of the picture is looking at. Now as with all rules they do have exceptions and when to use those exceptions is why there is still a need for professional photographers (how's that for a not so subtle comparison).
Now, to help you with with this rule of thirds and the tic-tac-toe board thing many of the new cameras have a display option that will place a tic-tac-toe grid on the view finder itself. Play with this rule of thirds and try to take a picture of someone or something placing it in each of the 4 crossing points and the middle of the picture as well as your subject looking alternately in an out of the picture at each of those point and study each of them your self. Then show them to someone else and get their opinion. If you do I am sure your composition will improve greatly. Try it, you'll like it.
Now on to the rest of the blog (blog? How did they settle on that?). The title might be a little thought provoking at first and maybe you've already guessed what it's all about. On Sunday we were on location of one of many movie sets of the documentary film of the "History of Branson". Our friends at Bear Creek Video Productions are doing the film and I'm telling you they have gone to great lengths to research the facts and capturing those facts on film. BCV Production owner, Mike Johnson and his entire staff are great to work with and present a professional work ethic that made the entire movie set relaxed and easy to do the job. And not to be left out, the actors and technical director are all classy people who love their work and, like the BCVP staffs' work ethic, professionalism was clearly in their blood. It's one thing to do a good job because you're paid to do it, yet another because it's a passion and clearly that was not lacking in any of the crews. The only negative encounter I had involved a ground hog and maybe I will share that incident in a future post if someone reminds me.
This is a great film and has so much information about the Branson area that I had no idea was a part of this local history. It's been a project in the works for years as I understand it and the research behind it has been exhausting. Some of the stories have been filmed on the location where they took place and some of them are a little difficult to find I'm told. But found they where and I for one am looking forward to its release sometime later this year. Our excitement has nothing to do with the fact that some of our photos are going to find their way into the final project........really nothing to do with that. Over the upcoming weeks I am hoping that we will be able to share some of these photos with you when we have the release to do so. I do know that Mike got video of us taking photos while on the set and will being getting some of that video to us for display on this website. I'm looking forward to that as well, not because I'm on it.....really not especially sense I'm on it....really!
Now I want everyone of you to mark down on your "to do" list to watch for the release of this great documentary movie "History of Branson" and buy one for yourself and everyone you know! They plan to have the movie distributed nationally and I'm sure we will have links to where you can find them. You can bet we will scream the news about the grand release here and I'm sure we will have several more entries to post in the future about our further adventures with this film in this blog (blog? Where, how, ......oh well).
Have a great day everyone! Richard
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