Creating depth
I conduct my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops all over the planet. I also teach two online classes with the BPSOP, and it’s this school that I’m writing about today.
In my part I four week class, I show people how to incorporate the basic elements of Visual Design into their imagery. I call it my Artist Palette: Shape. Texture, Pattern, Form, Color, and the most important element…Line.
We also work on ways to generate Visual Tension, using negative space to define the positive space, and applying a Vanishing Point (linear perspective) as a way to show depth in a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world; as in a photograph.
Since the camera has one eye (a lens) it can only see in two-dimensions, height and width; we have two eyes so we see in all three dimensions which include depth. Having my students anchor an object in the foreground using a wide-angle lens creates the illusion of depth.
That’s in my part I class.
When you sign up for my part II class, you have mastered (hopefully) these elements of design and composition and now we work on silhouettes, and your best friend…the shadow. We also spend a great deal of time on Line, and how to use it to move the viewer around the frame; which is a good way to keep the viewer an active participant when looking at our photos.
So now that I’ve given you a brief description of my two classes, I wanted to share with you some of the images that a few of my fellow photographers have taken in several of my past part II classes. I hope you will not only see what they have gotten out of both classes but be as impressed as I am with the level of work.
One last note, in my classes students can’t crop their photos and absolutely no post-processing. I want to see what they can do before clicking the shutter. So, what you see is what they got!!
Enjoy the show.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshops at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me some time.
JoeB
