Photographic composition knowledge for photography beginners

What knowledge should beginners learn about photography composition? Composition should pay attention to echo and symmetry, which is the traditional Chinese aesthetic standard. Below I have compiled some photography composition knowledge that beginners in photography must master. Welcome to read and refer to it!

Essential photography composition knowledge for beginners in photography

1. Horizontal position, so that the captured image will not be skewed. You can use buildings, telephone poles and other objects parallel or perpendicular to the ground as reference objects to try to keep the image balanced in the viewfinder.

2. The color balance is good, and the picture must have a strong sense of layering to ensure that the subject can stand out from the entire background. Such as complementary colors, the so-called red flowers and green leaves match this principle. Tonal balance, people wearing black clothes are generally not scheduled to be photographed against a dark background.

3. The foreground plays a role in balancing the picture. Sometimes when we find unbalanced gaps in the picture, such as when the sky looks monotonous without clouds, we use drooping branches and leaves at the top to make up for the shortcomings of the picture; sometimes when the bottom of the picture cannot be suppressed, and when the top is heavy and the bottom is light, we can use rocks. , railings are used as the foreground, and the dark tone makes the picture hold down the position, achieving a stable and balanced effect. The foreground uses the expression technique of virtual focus to give people a hazy and beautiful feeling

In real life, all stable objects have a balanced form: the four legs of a table are stable; when building a house, it is smaller at the bottom and larger at the top. , giving people a feeling of instability; the burden is heavy on one end and light on the other, making it inconvenient for people to walk; the posture of people during labor is obviously a posture that seeks to balance the body and conform to the characteristics of this labor? Many life phenomena cultivate people's desire for balance and play a role in people's aesthetic process. Under normal circumstances, the picture should be balanced and stable, making people feel stable, harmonious and complete. Taking advantage of people's psychological factors demanding balance, we can emphasize the expressiveness of the picture from several aspects:

a. Symmetrical composition. Symmetry has always been something our nation has emphasized, and it has always been the royal palace. The capitals are all symmetrically laid out. It emphasizes a solemn and solemn atmosphere, and shows a simple and solemn relationship in the symmetrical balance of "everything is even and stable".

b. The virtual and real layout echoes each other, just like Jiangnan gardens. In some lyrical scenery pictures that emphasize elegance, tranquility, and tenderness, what is required is a changing balance. The picture can be sparse and dense, virtual and real, but the overall requirement is balanced. In a pastoral scene, for example, there is a cow in the lower left corner, and there should preferably be a cloud in the sky in the upper right corner

How to take panoramic photos with a digital camera for a true panorama

In digital Before the advent of imaging technology, there were two ways for people to obtain panoramic photos: using a dedicated panoramic camera to rotate and shoot or a professional darkroom artist to manually stitch together. No matter which method was used, it was difficult for ordinary photography enthusiasts to do it. The "panorama" boasted by the APS camera only makes use of the large viewing angle of the ultra-wide-angle lens. Strictly speaking, it is more appropriately called a "frame photo". The popularity of digital cameras and digital image processing technology has made panoramic photography easy. As long as you have a digital camera and a computer that can run image processing software, anyone can try to create panoramic photos with amazing perspectives.

Key points for shooting

The photos used to stitch panoramas have certain requirements, such as similar exposure values, similar tones, arranged in sequence, slightly overlapping each other, etc. There are some precautions when shooting.

1. Selection of focal length

Some people think that when taking panoramic photos, the angle of view should be as large as possible, so the shortest focal length (wide-angle lens or the wide-angle end of a zoom lens) should be used, so that The number of photos that need to be stitched is small. In fact, this is a misunderstanding. It saves trouble when shooting but makes it troublesome when stitching. Because the wide-angle lens has a strong perspective effect, especially the edges of the picture, it is prone to distortion, making it difficult to achieve seamless splicing. Therefore, when shooting, you should use a medium focal length or telephoto end with less distortion, and the focal length should not be changed midway through the shooting.

2. Exposure parameters

Most digital cameras now have a special panorama mode. In this mode, the camera will automatically set the exposure parameters according to the requirements for taking panoramic photos. Cameras with panoramic function should pay attention to the following points: a. Use average metering when metering, use manual exposure or AE lock to lock the exposure parameters when exposing, and the aperture, speed, ISO, and resolution cannot be changed during the shooting of the same group of panoramic photos. and other settings; b. Use fixed white balance. Using automatic white balance may cause inconsistent tones in different photos.

3. Shooting method

When shooting, shoot in a certain order (from left to right or from top to bottom, etc.). It is best to use a tripod to rotate smoothly. Pay attention when rotating and shooting. The axis of rotation is vertical. When shooting around or panning point by point, pay attention to the consistent height and angle of the camera. Generally, do not use flash, as the flash will cause near brightness and far darkness.

There must be a certain overlap between two adjacent photos when shooting. Some digital cameras from brands such as Canon and Casio have auxiliary prompts on the LCD display in panoramic mode. Avoid shooting when the lighting conditions change drastically (such as clouds covering the sun) to avoid too big a difference in exposure between each frame. When shooting, be careful to avoid moving objects (such as vehicles and pedestrians) at the joints. Although choosing a position with obvious marks as the connection point is helpful for some automatic software recognition and splicing, we still recommend choosing parts without obvious marks and easy to mix as the joint, such as the water surface and distant mountains, so that it is not easy to see the seams when splicing. .

Useful stupid tricks and essential stupid tricks for getting started with digital photography

Nowadays, digital cameras are becoming more and more powerful, and some functions are not even available in professional-grade optical cameras, such as Talking about white balance adjustment, bracketing photography, scene mode photography, multi-point area evaluation metering, multi-point focus and offset focus, etc., and the automatic exposure function is becoming more and more powerful and perfect, so logically it seems that using digital Taking good photos with your camera is a given, but in reality it’s not that easy.

If you want to take more good photos, especially taking good photos in harsh environmental conditions, it depends on your familiarity and deep understanding of your photographic equipment, so that you can make the most of it. To avoid the shortcomings, you still need some basic knowledge of photography and aesthetic accomplishment. More importantly, you also need long-term accumulation of experience. Only when you are successful will it come naturally, so it is not an easy thing to do. I'm still a newbie in digital photography. I don't have much experience, but I've encountered a lot of mistakes. The photos I take that I'm satisfied with are often not the same. If I reflect carefully and experience it, I can still summarize something. The following "silly tricks" may have some reference value for movie friends who are still exploring experience. These stupid tricks are:

Shoot more and select

Shoot more, from a macro perspective, it means more practice and accumulation of experience. Specifically speaking, you might as well try out more lenses, win with more, choose the best among the many, or re-shoot a scene carefully after exploring the optimal solution. This is a stupid trick, but it is indeed a trick to give full play to the advantages of a digital camera. Optical photography friends cannot learn it. You see, optical camera photography requires film. There is no way to know on the spot whether you are satisfied with the shot or not until it is developed. More wins, but a lot of film will inevitably be wasted and the cost is too high. Therefore, optical photography enthusiasts often cherish the lens as gold, and do not press the shutter button easily, and even grab the lens carefully to take a picture. You can only know the result after you go back and develop it. If it is not satisfactory, it will be difficult. Time has passed and it is too late to make amends. Therefore, old friends often lament that optical photography is an art full of regrets.

Digital photography is different. The image is currently stored on the magnetic carrier in the machine, and can be played back and observed immediately. If you are not satisfied, you can just erase it and start over again. This is a major advantage of digital photography. So now I usually decide on a topic first, select several scenes around the topic, and circle around it a few times to draw up different angles and lighting conditions (backlight, forward light, metering, fill light, etc.) I would make a shooting plan, and then I would take a lot of shots without hesitation. Sometimes I would take several shots with the same angle and the same plan, and then I would stop and play them back. The shots that I was not satisfied with would be deleted on the spot, often leaving only seven or eight of them. The next two or three will be used as preliminary results.

Then shoot the next scene and work on it until you complete a special topic. Generally speaking, if you take two to three hundred or even four to five hundred shots, you will only get back seventy or eighty. After returning, save it to the hard drive, then use ACDSee to enlarge and play it back, and delete part of it. Then use ACDSee's editing function to playback for preliminary image processing. Generally, the first is to correct the skew, the second is to crop when necessary to improve the composition, and the third is to use the "auto level" function to correct and compensate for the deficiencies in exposure of individual photos. The photos after this process can be considered as preliminary finished products. They can be taken back to ACDSee to enlarge and play them again. If they are too mediocre, they will be deleted. In this way, there will only be twenty, thirty or even a dozen photos left for each topic. .