| Shapes: |
Shape is more fundamental than form, texture, or pattern because shape is the principal element of identification. An almost foolproof formula for creating a photograph that immediately catches a viewer’s eye is to give priority to a single visual element.
To make shapes prominent, you must zero in on them with your camera, eliminating busy and distracting background details. Also, for maximum impact, it is important that there be a strong contrast between the shapes and the surroundings that define them. This contrast can be between lightness and darkness, or it can come from a difference in color.
Without line there can be no shape since a shape is simply a line that is closed. Squares and rectangles are shapes enclosed by four lines and evoke feelings of stability and symbolize the manmade world.
A triangle is enclosed by three lines and evokes feelings of permanence, endurance, weight, and dominance and symbolizes strength. However, when you turn a triangle upside down, the mood shifts to instability, lightness, impermanence, and inferiority.
Curvilinear shapes, such as the letter S, evoke a sense of subtle motion, growth, and restfulness and symbolize water, plant growth and music. When curves begin to turn back on themselves, spirals and circles appear
A circle is a line that returns to its origin by always maintaining the same distance from a central point. Of all the universal symbols in art and nature, none is stronger than the circle. It symbolizes the sun, moon, earth, and all the planets and evokes feeling of completion, universality, psychological wholeness, and warmth. A circle is a satisfying whole that can unify a composition by providing a center of power.
There are several things to remember when you compose a photograph that depends primarily on shapes. First, a shape is best defined when front lit or backlit and second, there should be a strong contrast between the shape and its surroundings.
In emphasizing shape, your camera angle is also important. In general, a frontal, straight-on angle that minimizes the three-dimensionality of the subject is the one that will produce a flat, distinctive shape on film.
Shapes are everywhere. The above is a brief explanation on various shapes and what they symbolize. Using that as a guide when composing your image.
|
|