Yes you can take great photographs with your cameraphone. Regardless of the megapixels or other technical aspects of your cameraphone, you should be able to create compelling photographs if you give more than just the minimum necessary to “point and shoot”. In fact, with practice and attention to detail you might even take some interesting shots to share with the Flickr Cell Phone Photography Group or be able to create a fabulous portrait like Shawn Rocco did in 2008 during a quick session with President Obama. In this post I will begin sharing some concepts and strategies used by painters and photographers to create great pictures; these same ideas should be applied by practitioners of celltography.
Let’s start with composition. Composition refers to the arrangement of a photograph’s elements. The elements of a photograph are distinct from its subject matter.
Classic teaching of composition includes the Rule of Thirds. This rule tells us that an image should be divided into 9 cells by four imaginary lines (two horizontal and two vertical) as seen in the following photograph.
Align important elements with these lines and intersections.
Important elements of your photograph should be aligned with these imaginary dividing lines. In addition, the four intersections of these lines are sometimes called Power Points and should be where points of special interest are placed. Generally, horizon lines created by land or water should be two-thirds up from the photograph’s bottom edge. In contrast, a skyline typically looks best when it is just one-third up from the bottom.
Applying the Rule of Thirds should help you create well-balanced and interesting photographs. Of course, as with any “rule” there will be times when it will need to be broken.
Tags: cellphone photography, celltography, digital photography, photography
