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Author Topic: composition advice  (Read 6392 times)

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« on: February 26, 2008, 12:11 »
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Hi! After one of my photos from aquapark was bought I decide to try uploading more from the same trip.
Here is photo of water fountain which was rejected for first time because sun umbrella contained logotypes and second time for poor composition. I've tried to crop it according to rules of thirds but think that image look less appealing in this case.

Do you think this photo simply have wrong composition from beginning and couldn't be cured by cropping? If so I'd appreciate if someone cat advice if there is a way to take such photo correctly?
#1 uncropped version
#2 cropped version
#3 cropped version


« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2008, 13:22 »
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Couple of things, try a rotation of the image to make the building in the background horizon-straight.  It is somewhat unsettling to see tilted buildings, especially when it is not the result of perspective and lens distortion a la an ultrawide.  The umbrella in the back shows the same tilt. 

The rules of thirds always has to be taken with a grain of salt, along with every compositional rule.  They are not there for "put things here" but rather, these points on an image tend to highlight or downplay certain things, or, at a deeper level, emphasize tension and harmony (Chinese calligraphy is a terrific study for composition in this respect, the inherent meaning in compositional space.  I wish we would crack the Mayan written language, that too would be a fantastic study), it is all about what to emphasize to the viewer.  Putting something in the middle is so powerful it has the effect of almost hiding the rest of the image (but is also action neutral so boring if the object isn't the action), not always bad.  Putting something on the thirds, whether in 2D space (tic tac toe) or 1D (the third of a centerline) allows the viewer to take in the rest of the picture.  As an example, a sunflower with the flower placed on the upper third and the stem on the centerline will direct the eye to the flower, then flow down the stem.  With respect to tension and release, the first third is tense and full of action, moving into the picture, the center is neutral, the last third is released, the tension has passed (generally the best flower comp for this reason).  There are other compositional forms totally unrelated to the rule of thirds as well (diagonal and false diagonal for example, the rule of thirds is routinely broken for good abstract architecture).

It it were me, I'd rotate the shot to make the building level, and put it on the vertical centerline.  Put the point where the top of the wall intersects the vertical centerline on the lower third point.  This puts the main part of the spray on the top centerline vertical third and the nozzle near the edge (I believe, just an estimate by looking at it) at about 1/6 from the side and bottom (also a somewhat important important point).  If things don't fit nice you can always cheat and stretch a bit, especially if you keep the person in the water from stretching (clone in from an unstretched copy of the file). 

Hope this helps.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2008, 13:24 by Waldo4 »

« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2008, 10:15 »
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thanks a lot, Waldo4!
I've tried to follow your advices and image was accepted today.
I didn't align horizon from beginning as thought that it would make water flow under angle and it would make it look weird, but I was wrong and 1.6 degrees rotation didn't produce mentionable changes.

« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2008, 10:34 »
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I'd love to see the final product.  After pondering how things would line up and the effects that it should create, it would be interesting to see what it actually looks like.

« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2008, 13:12 »
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Hi Waldo, you can check resulting image here.
I'm not sure if I correctly understand explanation about cropping so if made mistake, would appreciate if you can crop image the way you proposed so I can learn right way.

« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2008, 13:31 »
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I can't do it right now, I need the PS on my home base computer to do it, so I'll take a stab at it in a few hours when I get home.  It definitely looks better this way.  Though I'll probably pull a little here and push a little there to make it fit nice.

I always wonder how the MS sites treat stretching and warping.  I know most say that you can't upsize a file, but stretching in PS uses bicubic resampling to smooth, which is no different than upsizing.  Then again, no matter what size I look at a picture, I cannot find traces of bicubic resampling unless it is an extreme effect (100% upsize etc..), at the small #'s they are talking about, ~5%, I have no idea how it could be spotted at anything less than 4-500% viewing, even then it would take some very tough inspection to spot.  I don't know if I could even do architecture the way I do without stretching, it is needed to correct the perspective distortions inherent in every architecture shot (I guess I could get a super expensive tilt/shift).

« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2008, 13:46 »
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not sure if GIMP using same algo(which is actually my graphic editor which used for preparing photos :P ) guess I should read something about different algos. I see few types of interpolations: None, Cubic, Linear, Sinc(Lanczos3).

Quote
I always wonder how the MS sites treat stretching and warping.  I know most say that you can't upsize a file, but stretching in PS uses bicubic resampling to smooth, which is no different than upsizing.  Then again, no matter what size I look at a picture, I cannot find traces of bicubic resampling unless it is an extreme effect (100% upsize etc..), at the small #'s they are talking about, ~5%, I have no idea how it could be spotted at anything less than 4-500% viewing, even then it would take some very tough inspection to spot.  I don't know if I could even do architecture the way I do without stretching, it is needed to correct the perspective distortions inherent in every architecture shot (I guess I could get a super expensive tilt/shift).
I think that finally understand how you advised to crop picture, at least I hope so :) You were suggesting to stretch parts of picture and I've missed this somehow :P

Thanks once again for info, I'm going to check about types of interpolation used in GIMP and are they similar to PS or not.

« Reply #7 on: February 27, 2008, 14:04 »
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Actually I wasn't at first, I said that it may be needed, but after seeing the rotated version, to do much more would take some stretching.  I probably would have rotated it even further (my initial estimate was about 3-4%), but you may have run out of image in the lower RH corner.  The water doesn't seem too difficult to clone in though.  It would make the water spray at the nozzle tilted, a perspective distortion that can be fixed by pushing the lower LH corner in (free transform in PS, not sure what the Gimp has or if it can do it).  The one thing that I would have based most of it around is having the spire on the building on the vertical centerline, but looking at it now I don't think that would work.  The person in the water really gets in the way to put the spray on one horizontal third and the building spire on the other, which I think is probably the overall ideal comp, I think that they either would be partially chopped off or too close to the edge for comfort, and completely removing them would require some surgical clone stamping at the top of their head, almost impossible really.  I'll see what I can do with it though later.

« Reply #8 on: February 27, 2008, 14:29 »
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I think that GIMP have similar free transform functionality although I'm not sure if picture would look as good as before(in terms of quality) but I'm going to check it out.

As for person I also don't like where it's now but I don't try to make such serious image manipulations as try that photo would look good from beginning and if it don't, I'm trying not to spend too much time for correcting this.

« Reply #9 on: February 27, 2008, 15:14 »
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Heck it's approved, they think that it is good enough.  :D

« Reply #10 on: February 27, 2008, 19:20 »
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Here you go, added a bit of sky to the top, and rotated it a little more.  Notice how the eye is immediately drawn to the spray, then follows the spray down to take in the rest of the scene.  The person on the right is very secondary, I wish that they were slightly to the left of directly under the umbrella, they would interact with the spray much more.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2008, 19:22 by Waldo4 »

« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2008, 20:05 »
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Great job, Waldo! You're right eyes are really magnified to spray which is the main subject. It's totally change the picture and make it look much better IMHO!
Can you tell if you used only free transform tools for getting more sky above spray or some other tools also?

Thanks once again for example I have to admit that I didn't imagined it this way before I saw it, it's really helped!

« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2008, 21:29 »
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Actually I didn't use the transform at all, I kept trying different things and nothing was working quite right, until I realized I wanted more sky.  I increased the canvas size at the top and painted it in, first getting a good gradient by using the colors at the top (the vignette in the upper right is very noticeable when trying to paint in a sky) by rough painting, giving it a good blur, then fine painting with a lighter sky tone at 3% opacity going over it lightly to get a nice smooth transition between tones.  The sky probably couldn't pass inspection at a tougher site right now, I kinda quickly did it, but with a bit more meticulous work, good results can be achieved.  I also used a light, wide radius contrast mask (45% opacity, 110 blur radius) to even out some of the harsh shadows and improve the lighting a touch.  A contrast mask is a duplicate layer, desaturated, inverted, blurred, and overlay blended (not sure how much of that Gimp can do, but I know PS elements can).


 

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