Today I bring you a book to update them on one of the essential aspects of photography: composition. Fran Nieto, exceptional photographer and grandmaster, offers us the tools to compose our photos masterfully, because it is the most direct and effective way to attract the attention of the public.
You if you like photography and want to understand the art of composition, understand the structure of an image, how to touch the audience or train your gaze to capture their attention. Composition is essential for taking a photo. In this title, the author goes further and tries to make the reader understand why all these rules are used in photography.
- It’s not to get right to the point.
- It’s about deepening.
- Contextualizing and understanding.
- If you want something fast.
- Concise and concrete.
- It’s not for you.
- As it can be a little heavy in some sections.
This publication consists of five parts (and one last with gratitude).
A first chapter dedicated to contextualizing and exploring how our brain works in front of a photograph, what role the hemispheres have, how we perceive or the importance of understanding this function to shape our photo.
If you know how your audience will interpret it, you can reinforce the message based on how you organize the elements.
Another topic covered in this section is the importance of an extensive and diverse cultural background to better understand the messages hidden in the photographs and how to transmit them with your photographs.
In this second chapter, Fran Nieto connects nature with mathematics and different artistic disciplines in something so complex and at the same time as present in everything around us such as the golden number, the Fibonacci sequence and other Phi curiosities. Which in some moments can be something complex, fascinating and really curious.
All this serves to contextualize and present the most basic standards of photography. The mastery of the gaze, of third parties or of the horizon, as well as the need to transgress them, are the subject of this second part.
What language do we have to visually communicate our message? Visual elements, compositional language, lines, shape, texture, volume, color, harmony and contrast, emotions through color, rhythm, scale, movement, negative and positive space, balance, black and white are the themes addressed by the author in this third chapter, which ends with narrative photography and how literary resources can be used in the visual language. This can be a bit complex at first reading, but very interesting.
In this fourth chapter you will be able to read and understand how to place all this language in the image: focus, framing, decisive moment, framing, point of view or format, the subject and its relationship to the background, the time of installation as an element of composition, focal length, aperture, light, RAW format and other essential concepts of photography make up this penultimate theme.
This last chapter is the least directly related to composition and the one that interests me most, is the most personal part of the book in which Fran Nieto shares impressions and advice, born of experience and offered with common sense and generosity.
These are tricks applicable to photography in general, without which learning to compose is of little use, you may already know them, but a reminder and putting your feet on the ground is always good.
The project work, the need to know the team and train, to go beyond the limits of each team rather than obsessing over shopping, understand what drives us to turn and know what we want to convey with each image or the importance of being self-critical and learning our mistakes are some of the topics covered. One last gift.
Fran Nieto is a professor of photography and specialist in macro photography and landscape, his passion for teaching has taken him all over the country, training thousands of amateur and professional photographers, his images have been awarded in more than 30 competitions, he also organizes conferences for the dissemination of photography and has participated in several of them as a lecturer.
To learn more about it, you can click here
The author’s examples. Everything is explained with a photograph that accompanies the text. In many cases, with an image taken with different compositions where you can see the difference between one and the other. The author explains how and why he came to the end. As in the “Step through the “Photo step by step” section.
Another aspect that I liked the most is the way the subject is deepened, in many books we find tips, rules of composition, etc. , in this case Fran Nieto does not settle for this and explains why you get to this point. we perceive images to understand why one type of photograph works better than another.
I also find it interesting that each chapter starts with annotations of what you can learn and the exercises it proposes throughout the chapters. A way to get to work and put what you read into practice. The only way to learn.
The size of the font, especially that of the legends. Some people may have difficulty reading them.
Some people may find it a little heavy or dense when talking about more theoretical aspects, but as I said at first, it’s a book to research and look beyond this-is-as-because-yes. To think and navigate.
And silly, it’s a personal pastime or a publication suggestion. Sometimes the “Step by Step Photos” section was in the middle of a text, which made me stop reading and I didn’t like it very much.
It is a very useful book if you want to delve into “The Art of Composition” as its title suggests. It is a very generous publication in the number of sample images and with a clear didactic orientation. Full of examples, explanations, tips and anecdotes.
You know that you liked a book when you are certain that you will come back and / or that you have filled it with notes, that it made you think of certain problems or that it has taken you away in some respects, if none of this happens for you you have wasted time, I have not lost mine, I assure you. That’s why I dedicated this article to you, I hope it will be of use to you as it has been to me.
And if you liked it or found this article useful, do not hesitate to share it, surely someone will thank you when this book falls into your hands. Thank you and good reading!