Common framing and misunderstanding in camera shooting

The choice of camera, lighting and lens affects the quality of the picture, but in the final analysis, it is still expressed by the photographer's framing and composition. Many novices spend a lot of time arguing about the resolution, dynamic range or sharpness of the camera, but rarely pick up the camera to think hard about framing and composition. The following are some common framing and composition mistakes. If you are a new photographer, you should pay attention to avoid making these mistakes.

1. Uneven horizontal line

After all, there are a few photographers who lack standard consciousness, because everyone knows that crooked pictures will bring trouble to the audience. Many photographers have a habit of paying attention to the level on the tripod before starting shooting. This is a good habit, but it doesn't always get the best effect. Because in many cases, your subject is not horizontal or vertical, you must put the level aside and adjust the tilt of the pan/tilt to find that level in the viewfinder.

Now, more and more photographers are deliberately looking for oblique composition, and they often simply regard such composition as a "style". In the composition of still life photography, oblique composition is also good, as long as the picture elements achieve visual balance. In film and television photography, oblique composition represents an unstable state in visual language, which often appears in the bridge section that needs to create a thrilling and suspenseful atmosphere. Unless it is necessary for the plot, try to avoid this composition that will bring discomfort to the audience.

2. Too much headroom

From the first lesson of learning TV camera, you will be told not to stand tall, that is, to leave room for your head. Although this principle is still valid in some cases, the basis of this principle has actually changed. When the aspect ratio of the picture is 4:3, the appropriate head space creates a balanced and beautiful composition. However, under the aspect ratio of 16:9, when you leave the head space in the close-up composition, there will be extra large gaps on both sides, and the center of gravity of the picture will sink, resulting in a strange sense of head placement in the picture (below).

Therefore, when it is necessary to compose a close-up or even a close-up of a face with 16:9 or a wider aspect ratio, please boldly ignore the head space or directly put the head out of the picture.

3. Excessive use of white space

Like oblique composition, blank space is also an abused composition technique. In static photography or traditional Chinese painting, blank space leaves viewers with endless imagination space. In film and television photography, one picture after another, the audience has almost no room and time to imagine. Unless there is a special metaphor, the inexplicable blank space not only breaks the balance of the picture, but also distracts the attention of the audience.

Just like the picture above, 80% of the area is blank. Unless the actor moves in front of him in the next picture, or the camera will shake people out of the picture, such a picture is meaningless.

4. Don't change the height of the camera

People are always used to seeing the world from their own apparent horizon, so many junior photographers set their tripods to their most comfortable heights and then stopped moving. No matter what the theme is, they can't think of adjusting the height of the camera. When they took pictures of the children, we saw a picture with a very low angle. The top of the child's head is larger than the face, and the background is all over the ground. When shooting a tall object, it will be extremely upturned. It's like telling the audience how amateur you are. Changing the camera height not only changes the shooting angle of the subject, but also changes the relationship between the subject and the background. Similar problems include not changing the camera scene, shooting everything in the middle and so on.

At the other extreme, I especially like to shoot from another angle. Don't forget that pictures serve the plot. If you want to show a person lost in the urban jungle, you can shoot this person at a low angle at the intersection. But if it's just an ordinary shot, but you use a backhand, it doesn't make any sense except to make the actor's chin swell up.

5. Do not consider the lens assembly.

Film and television pictures are not separate works, composition only accounts for half of the creation, and the combination of lenses is the other half. So a photographer who doesn't consider the lens combination will drive the post-production staff crazy. Therefore, in framing and composition, we should also give full consideration to the combination of pictures. In addition to avoiding the feeling of jumping in the same scene, it is also necessary to prevent off-axis composition that easily confuses spatial relations.