How to grasp the theme of photos?

How to make your photos with distinct themes and prominent subjects is a very important issue in photography. Photography is a plastic art, and modeling needs a clear theme. If you want a clear theme, sometimes you have to highlight the theme. Even in landscape photography, although there is no directional theme like documentary or portrait, there is still a relatively prominent theme or theme group, which makes your photography vivid and vivid. Modeling, creating something with style, is layout and composition. This paper mainly summarizes the composition, lighting, tone, light tone and color. It is inevitable that there is personal prejudice. Please criticize and correct me.

First, composition

The so-called composition is to organize and arrange the layout of the scenes in the lens. Mainly depends on the angle, viewpoint and framing range of photography. The angle of view is mainly the positional relationship between the photographer and the scene in three-dimensional space when looking at things, such as how far, how high, and how the direction is. This is the most basic problem of observing things and photography, that is, to grasp the powerful and favorable terrain. Determine the direction of the viewpoint angle, and then choose the range of the lens, that is, which part of the thing to choose and which aspect to highlight. This depends not only on the focal length of the lens, but also on the openness of the photographic environment. When the photographic environment is open, the freedom of framing is high, and vice versa. How to choose the viewpoint is not discussed in detail, but how to lay out the scenery in the lens, just like how to paint on the canvas.

Personally, no matter which side of the scene you choose, you should choose the most distinctive part of the scene to express it. A scene or a thing, no matter in what direction, will have a most distinctive feature, and the purpose of modeling can be achieved by expressing the characteristics of this thing in this direction. Secondly, everything or scenery has a so-called direction problem, at least where you observe or by convention. For example, people, when we face forward, will be divided into front, side, back, up, down and so on. Subdivision will appear front side, right front side, left back side, right back side and so on. Head down, head up, lean forward, lean back, lean back and so on.

The most basic composition methods are geometric center composition method and "tic-tac-toe" composition method of golden section point. Geometric center composition method is to arrange the subject in the center of the picture. This composition method is mainly used for the composition of subjects with geometric symmetry left and right, such as buildings with geometric symmetry left and right and up and down. Generally, subjects with left and right symmetry are often arranged at the left and right center points, and subjects with up and down symmetry are arranged at the upper and lower center points. The composition of the word "well" is to arrange the main body on the four golden points of the word "well" according to the orientation of the main body. These two kinds of composition are traditional basic composition methods. Because the golden section composition is common, it is sometimes used when shooting symmetrical subjects. For example, when the subject is symmetrical, sometimes the main performance part or the main weight of the subject, that is, the visual focus (sometimes called the visual interest point), is arranged at the golden section point with the left, right, up and down centers, and so is the subject or visual center that is symmetrical up and down. These two kinds of compositions are traditional basic composition methods, which are introverted. In addition to symmetry, there is also a balanced composition, that is, the main body and the foil seem to feel the balance between left and right in the picture layout, giving people a sense of stability.

Taking people as the main body, for example, my personal approach is to put people in a three-dimensional space, which is a cylindrical space. I only consider the left-right relationship here, and the upper-lower relationship can be modified with reference to the left-right relationship. This cylinder takes the center of the picture as the center and the left and right golden sections as the radius. A standing person assumes that he is at the edge of a cylinder and his face is facing the central axis of the cylinder. When he faces you in different directions, he can be considered to have rotated to different positions on the cylinder, and when he faces you and turns his back on you, it can be assumed that the cylinder will rotate people to this position, so when composing music, people will be in the center. When a person faces left or right, his face is facing the central axis of the picture, so that the cylinder will turn him to the far left or right. When people look at you sideways from left to right, assuming that the cylinder will turn people to the position formed with you, how many phases will people's layout shift before they feel stable and balanced. The bigger the front of a person faces you, the closer it is to the central axis, and the maximum value faces you. The smaller the head is facing you, the more it deviates from the central axis. The maximum is completely on your side, on the left or right edge of the cylinder, which is the golden section.

This is just my personal composition method. Sometimes I can't completely follow this principle in the process of shooting. Sometimes it will be considered comprehensively because of many factors such as the subject's action line of sight. In most cases, I just generally follow this principle. When this is a single person, other aspects of landscape composition can be flexibly used with reference to this composition method. Different subjects or main visual centers will have different composition methods. For example, we can follow this principle or method to take a panoramic view of people. If it is a close-up or close-up, the main body or focus of the performance is no longer the expression of people or the eyes of people, so this is just a personal general method. When the subject and focus are not single, but there is a subject and a companion, both the subject and the companion should be taken into account in the comprehensive layout, so that the imaginary cylinder will no longer follow the golden section position relationship and rely on its own feelings to determine and arrange. The above mainly considers and explains two basic composition methods in traditional composition. In addition to symmetry, balance and golden section, there are many kinds of "wells", such as ring, S-shape and triangle. In addition to symmetry and balance, there are relations such as setting off, contrast and echo. These are the layout and relationships that are paid more attention to in traditional composition.

Traditional composition is mainly the introverted pursuit of symmetry, balance and smoothness of the picture, which forms a kind of harmony between the scenes inside the picture and between the scenes and the environment. The whole picture looks like a complete and self-contained world. This kind of composition is called traditional conservative composition. The antonym of conservative composition is open composition. The so-called open composition is to break the traditional composition way of pursuing symmetry, stability, balance, self-contained and self-contained system, and pursue communication inside and outside the screen. The picture space is open, which is a composition method that takes into account the viewer's personal feelings and imagination space. This composition emphasizes the relationship between the picture world and the world outside the picture, emphasizes the interactive relationship between the picture and the viewer, and considers the right and consciousness of the viewer's participation, which is the humanization of the recent art theory. According to the reception aesthetics in literary theory, a work of art can only be completed with the participation of the appreciator. Different appreciation levels and tastes of the appreciators lead to different connotations of the works. Therefore, the author can't impose his appreciation interests and values on the appreciator, and can't force the appreciator to accept the interests and values expressed by the author, and ask the appreciator to interpret and reconstruct the work. Therefore, open composition often takes into account the relationship between subject and audience, picture space and real space, and the form often does not follow the symmetry, balance and fluency of traditional composition, and pursues a nature without subjective intervention. The theme of expression often has no direction, and the theme idea is ambiguous and vague.

Therefore, composition is a very important aspect of photography, the commander-in-chief of other performance elements and the soul factor. Almost all other performance elements can only be shown when they are related to composition. Therefore, composition is the most fundamental in photography, so if you want to make your own photography theme distinct, you must work hard on composition to make the theme or focus of photography more distinct and prominent. A photographic work, if the composition has distinct characteristics and other factors are relatively weak, will also make your photography artistic. If there are other artistic factors to supplement the composition, your photography will be icing on the cake and ascend to the throne of the art palace. So composition is the key to photography. Second, light and shadow

Art is the carrier of expressing feelings, and photography is the art of light and shadow, which is used to draw pictures. Therefore, light and shadow become another performance factor besides composition. Because of light, we can make a composition according to the distribution of light and shadow, so the essence of photography is light and shadow. Therefore, whether it is photo photography or film photography, it is particularly important to make good use of light for photography. In the black-and-white photography period when photography does not involve color, light and shadow are a fundamental factor to express feelings.

Light and shadow can be divided into hue and light hue, which can be generally called hue. There are very subtle differences between the two, which are often collectively referred to as tones, but the emphasis is different. Shadow tone often focuses on the overall tone of the picture, while light tone is often more specific, mainly referring to the specific distribution of light and shadow, that is, the ladder distribution of light. After color participates in photography, it produces excellent tone on the basis of shadow tone. (I don't know if this statement is scientific, because it was written by letter and needs to be corrected. According to the number of bright and dark components in the picture, the hue can be divided into high-key, middle-key and low-key, also called bright, middle and dark tones, and can be divided into hard, middle and soft tones according to the contrast between light and dark. These two tones refer to different things, light and dark tones mainly refer to shadow tones, and soft and hard tones mainly refer to light tones. Generally speaking, bright colors express bright, positive and upward emotions, but they also give people a simple but not heavy and profound feeling, while dark colors express depressed, dark and heavy emotions. The emotions expressed by hard sounds are firm, heavy, textured and sharp, and they are conflicts rather than conflicts. The expression of light tone is brisk, the contradictory relationship is gentle, and it is a conflict rather than a conflict. The formation of tone style is mainly related to subjective and objective light and texture.

For example, objectively: in the night with insufficient light, the night scene is of course dominated by dark tones, and the daytime is of course dominated by bright tones. For example, when shooting metal and cotton, the color of the subject itself will also determine the tone of the shooting picture. The amount of light and the amount of light reflected by the subject determine the nature of hue. The softness of the light determines the softness of the picture. Shooting under soft fluorescent lamp and bright sunlight at noon, the hardness of the picture will be different. At the same time, the degree of reflection of the surrounding environment also determines the tone of the picture. For example, white wards and dark and damp cells will definitely have different colors. Besides the objective factors of light, the factors that affect the tone of the picture also have a great relationship with the exposure combination. When a bright object is used as the exposure benchmark, the picture is often dark, showing the characteristics of low-key dark tone and hard tone. When a darker object is used as the exposure benchmark, the picture often shows the characteristics of bright and high tone. In addition, it is also related to the nature of light, the angle of light use and the ratio of main light to auxiliary light. Generally, the front light is bright, the side light is intermediate, and the side backlight or backlight is dark. The contrast between the main light and the auxiliary light is harder, the contrast between the main light and the auxiliary light is smaller, and the picture is softer. The angle and area of the main light often determine the overall tone of the picture. The use of light also determines the artistic conception of the picture. The contrast between the front light and the main light and the auxiliary light is small, and the picture is often dull and the three-dimensional sense is not strong, which is suitable for expressing lively subjects. The side light has a strong contrast with the main light and auxiliary light, and the picture is often profound and stereoscopic, which is suitable for expressing the modeling with strong stereoscopic effect. Side backlighting and backlighting will have distinct outlines, which will make the theme vivid, but they will also have different general visual feelings, which are suitable for expressing special visual situations.

Light determines the tone and tone, and determines the expression of emotions in the picture. At the same time, as a composition factor, it is also an important factor considered in composition. In the picture, no matter what kind of picture, the main content of the subject or main part we want to express will be in a certain environment. Therefore, any photographic work will have a background, which is also a realistic necessity. Therefore, how to correctly handle the relationship between subject and background has become an important content of composition consideration. In order to highlight the main body or important parts, we often put the main body on the background with relatively large contrast, so that the main body we express will be vivid and three-dimensional. Therefore, considering light and shadow in composition has become a very important means to highlight the subject. Under normal circumstances, light and darkness often have such feelings and attributes. Bright things often give people the feeling of being bright, lively, open, expanding and retreating, while dark things often give people the feeling of being heavy, depressed, introverted, stubborn and progressive. Therefore, in composition, we often put dark things on a bright background, such as silhouette; Or put bright things on a dark background, such as fire, fireworks, sunrise, etc. , and put the subjects with light and dark distribution on the background with opposite contrast or the background with middle tone. Therefore, if you want to make the subject vivid, you should always pay attention to separating the subject from the background. The use of light and shadow is also a very important factor.

Speaking of the relationship between background and subject, by the way, the relationship between subject and prospect, the relationship between subject and companion. Foreground is the scene in front of the subject. In a photographic work, the subject and background are essential, but the choice of foreground is based on the needs of photographic composition and expression, and some scenery will be selected according to the environment. If there is no prospect in the environment, there is no need to forge the prospect for the sake of the prospect, which violates the principle of artistic truth. In some circumstances, when the foreground plays an important role in emphasizing, setting off and highlighting the subject of things, or in order to create a profound sense of environment or express a formal aesthetic feeling, we often add a foreground as a foil to make the subject more vivid and vivid. The choice of foreground is often related to the subject, or it is contrast, emphasis, echo, or strengthening the rendering of the environment and so on. Accompaniment sometimes appears as the background of the subject, and sometimes as the foreground of the subject. Sometimes it exists as a relational object that echoes the subject. Dealing with the relationship between subject and companion will sometimes make the picture vivid and full. Just like the relationship between flowers and leaves, flowers are the main body. Without leaves as companionship and background, flowers will be monotonous. Another example is the prospect and foil of a withered flower, which can reflect the symbolic significance of the tenacious vitality of the flower as the main body. For another example, if a blooming lotus flower and a budding lotus flower set each other off, it may express a growing relationship. The contrast and contrast between a mature lotus flower and only one petal will form a meaning of life replacement and gestation, so the relationship between subject and partner can be deeply and comprehensively expressed.

Third, color.

Color is the most important emotional element besides truly restoring the original color of an object and giving people a normal visual experience. Because color does not enter photography, the expression of emotion mainly depends on the creation of hue. Once color enters photography, it becomes the most important emotional element in photography. Color and light and shadow together constitute an important carrier of photographic visual modeling. Therefore, in color photography, when we discuss the emotional expression of photography, we usually discuss the tone and tone of the picture.

As mentioned above, tones are generally divided into warm tones, cold tones and of course intermediate tones. However, due to the significance of color, it is difficult to achieve a balance between cold and warm colors in a photographic picture, so most color photography will have a tendency to tone. The tendency of color tone determines the tendency of the picture to express artistic feelings. The use of color can also reflect the melody of the picture and form a harmonious and unified rhythm. All art is rhythmic, and melody and rhythm determine the ups and downs of emotional expression. Therefore, a good work of art often pays great attention to the harmony and unity of melody rhythm and the change of rhythm.

In the art of photography, it shows the harmony of tone and rhythm. Of course, a painting, whether the melody rhythm is harmonious or not, occupies a large proportion in the composition. In composition, subject and companion, subject and background, subject and foreground will form a basic melody rhythm, so timbre and color strengthen and render this rhythm, making it more prominent and tendentious. Generally, warm colors give people a positive, lively, warm, unrestrained and warm feeling. Cool colors give people the feeling of being quiet, stable, peaceful and cold. This feeling is caused by the feeling of color. The color spectrum biased towards red has a warm feeling, which is a warm tone, while the color spectrum biased towards blue has a cold feeling, which is a cold tone. Cool and warm colors often set off each other, and this attribute is often more clear. So we often use a little cold tone or warm tone to set off the overall tone of the picture, so that the picture is more lively and lifelike. The general feeling is that cool colors often have the feeling of shrinking, expanding, quiet and relatively light weight, while warm colors generally have the feeling of being prominent, condensed, lively and heavy, so they often make full use of this attribute of color to make layout arrangements in composition. In order to express warm colors, sometimes some color elements different from the main body are mixed. Complementary colors often play a very eye-catching role in the picture and are also used as warnings in life, such as protective colors of some animals, traffic lights and traffic signs in life. The colors of some buildings sometimes form a style with such TINT. In order to make colors have a harmonious rhythm and form a smooth transition, similar colors are often used for a peaceful transition, so that the picture can express feelings implicitly and peacefully and alleviate contradictions. In order to express strong emotions, we often make full use of this color element, which is a vivid picture style and directly expresses emotions. Sometimes in composition, we will also pay attention to make the brightly colored subject stand out on different color backgrounds, or make the subject stand out through the contrast between the subject and the foreground color. Fourth, the lens

The use of photographic lens often makes the perspective relationship of the subject feel different. Therefore, the photography style has formed a unique style. As we all know, wide-angle exaggerates the positional relationship between the subject and the background foreground, exaggerates the sensory effect of visual perspective, and often produces a sense of depth, making the picture more layered. The telephoto lens compresses the subject and background. The position of the foreground makes the picture feel close and crowded. At the same time, due to different lenses, the depth of field will be different. Wide angle will produce a deep depth of field, and the depth of field will be large, and the telephoto will often be shallow, which will blur the foreground and background or even completely blank. Wide-angle viewing angle is large, including a wider range, while telephoto viewing angle is narrow, often including a smaller range. In order to highlight the characteristics of photography theme, we often choose a more suitable lens to create. For example, we often use a wide angle to enhance this effect, showing vast space and scenery, showing majestic momentum, or highlighting the position of the main body in front. In order to express the crowded space or emphasize the characteristics of the subject, telephoto is often used to highlight the subject and blur the background. Personally, I also think that depth-of-field shots are usually more documentary, express more objective and true meanings, and are less subject to subjective intervention by photographers. The telephoto lens is subjective, because it highlights the characteristics of the subject, so it feels strong personal subjective feelings and styles. A telephoto lens often expresses an image in which psychological factors play a role, such as romance. Sometimes, in order to express the aesthetic feeling of a certain composition form, this telephoto often forms the visual style of plane geometric patterns, and the concise composition makes the picture form a new sense of abstraction. Wide angle often emphasizes the contrast between subject and companion, while telephoto emphasizes the contrast between subject and background prospect.

Verb (short for verb) exercises.

In addition to the contrast between the depth of field and the reality on the lens, the contrast of motion often makes the subject more prominent. In order to make the main body of expression stand out, we often use sports to express it, and some just simply express sports. Of course, all arts are expressing movement and rhythm, and rhythm is the externalized form of movement. The motion expressed by photography is a state of motion, a trend of motion, a moment of motion and a solidified motion. In order to express the movement, the static subject is sometimes expressed through the moving environment. For example, if the booth in the middle of the road is photographed with a long exposure time, the vehicles driving on the road will form a virtual image of the movement, and the light band will be lost at night. Sometimes, in order to express and follow the moving subject, a short exposure time is used to solidify the moving subject, while the background forms a virtual shadow, such as a moving car or a moving football player. Sometimes the subject is allowed to blur and record the motion of the subject, for example, shooting the traffic at night, making the traffic on the expressway form a river with light bands, extending the exposure time, and the waterfall forms the feeling of a white soft ribbon. Sometimes, the essence and spirit of the subject are expressed by freezing the moment when the subject moves. For example, shooting a bullet through an apple at high speed can make people fully understand the state of a neutron bomb in rapid movement, quickly capture the state of a soldier at the moment of being shot, and show the cruelty of war and the heroism of soldiers. Therefore, the performance speed of photography enables us to see the state and essential characteristics of the moving subject. Sometimes, the essence of photography is actually to record the essence and spirit of various things, and this essence and spirit is expressed through movement, so expressing movement has become a higher requirement for realism in photography.

Science and art are two aspects to explain objective things. Human knowledge is basically expanded and extended in these two aspects. Scientific research expresses what the world is, why it is like this, how the past becomes the present and how the present becomes the future. It is rational logical analysis and rational understanding. Art expresses the emotional relationship between man and the world, which is the problem of human beauty. Artistic knowledge tells people what beauty is, why it is and how to produce it. Art comes from the interaction between human beings and the world. Music comes from chanting in sports. When the chant is expressed rhythmically, it communicates the rhythm of labor, unifies thoughts and emotions, and strengthens the communication between people. Therefore, art is formed in the interaction between man and the world, and the artistic essence associated with practicality determines the principle of authenticity of art, and truth becomes the life of art. Since matter is in motion, the motion of objects is absolute and static is relative, therefore, art, as an aspect of human understanding of the world, is formed in the process of interaction between man and the world, which will inevitably show the essence of material motion. Therefore, all art is describing, expressing and expressing movement. Photography as an art category is no exception. So in essence, photography expresses the essence of the moving state of things. You may think that the expression movement of landscape photography and portrait photography is not very strong, but it is not. The scenery wonders in landscape photography show the changes of the earth's geology and seasons. Portrait photography expresses the spiritual movement of human behavior and psychological activities. Therefore, in portrait photography, accurately grasping the subtle expressions of characters can better reflect people's mental outlook, so famous photographers attach great importance to grasping people's most vivid and subtle feelings, which is often the most real side. For example, grasping the painful expressions and actions can reflect people's grief over the loss of their loved ones, the lofty affection of human beings, the subtle expression of shyness and joy, the happiness and warmth of a girl's first love and the influence of love on human beings. Therefore, the high level of portrait photography is not how beautiful the posture of the model is, but a noble soul under the beautiful appearance. I hope it works for you.