To Break the Rules, You Must First Know the Rules

Finding Forrester is one of my favorite films. In the movie, William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, is a reclusive Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who never gave the world a second novel. Forrester befriends a 16-year-old inner-city basketball player named Jamal. Jamal, an aspiring writer, visits Forrester's apartment to seek the author's wisdom. In one scene, Forrester and Jamal have a lively discussion about rules of writing, such as "You shouldn't start a sentence with 'and'." They talk about how breaking the rules can create a wonderful impact. If overdone, however, it also can have a devastating impact.

This is so true in photography. Photographers must study and know the rules of good visual composition like writers study and learn the rules of good writing composition. Once you understand the rules, your ability to break them helps you have better impact with your photos.

Breaking the rules can create visual surprises. Tom Kennedy was the director of photography for National Geographic magazine when I showed him my portfolio many moons ago. While at the time my work was professional and of excellent quality, Kennedy's comment was that he wanted more surprises.

Kennedy had seen just about everything in his role at National Geographic. When Kennedy said he wanted to see more surprises, he wanted -- for example -- to see shots that weren't taken from my normal standing height or sitting height. One of the things his critique had me doing right away was looking for the extreme. I started shooting with my camera on the ground, and finding ways to get up high. I also started to shoot extreme close-ups, another change in what I'd been doing.

There comes a point in your photographic journey where you begin to find your own voice. In the movie, Forrester had Jamal use a typewriter to simply copy Forrester's work. The author began doing this after he set down a typewriter in front of Jamal, and the pupil just sat there waiting for something to come into his head. When Forrester saw Jamal wasn't typing, he asked Jamal, "What are you doing?"

"I am thinking," said Jamal.

"No thinking," Forrester replied. "That comes later."

To get the juices flowing, Forrester gave him some of his own work to copy. It was through punching the keys and going through the actions that Jamal loosened up and slowly, after copying the work, started to write his own work.

Photographers do the same thing. We copy other people's work to learn how they did it, and then add the underlying technique to our long-term memory to use later. Most of the arts require the mastery of certain skills before you can create your own original works. This typically takes about five years. You can see this as musicians learn to play an instrument like a piano.

After copying the concepts of other photographers, you soon learn that your work is no better or worse than many others. This is when you realize that to stand out from others, you must do something unique -- your surprise.

Forrester had a great quote that made me think; he asked, "Why is it the words we write for ourselves are always so much better than the words we write for others?" As photographers, we don't always receive assignments that challenge us; there's only so much you can do with a check presentation, for example. Most of the great photographers I know have a secret to their work -- personal projects that sustain their creative juices.

The key to surprising others is to first surprise yourself -- to take risks and look through your camera in a different way, not being afraid to break the rules. Stretch your way of looking and see if there is a better perspective than you normally take when making photos. Who knows what you might discover?

Solving the Mystery of the Headless Photograph

My wife Dorie was standing in line at a local drugstore and overheard a customer complain about his photos. He asked, "Why is their head chopped?" The clerk told him that the photo technician was off, but could help him tomorrow.

As I walked up to Dorie, she told the customer that I was a professional photographer and could probably help. Many years ago I managed a one-hour photo lab in Texas, where I was asked this same question almost daily.

Missing heads (and other disappearing objects) are a common occurrence when making prints. The reason? Digital cameras make pictures that are a particular shape, a ratio of height to width. When we order prints, say a 4 x 6 or an 8 x 10, the shape or ratio is different for each size print.

Unfortunately, the machine that prints the pictures doesn't know how to crop the images in the best way because it's a machine -- so heads go missing from the edges of our photographs. To overcome this problem, photographers need to understand that parts of our photos will be cropped off, and allow for this when we make the picture.

The relationship of an image's width to height called an aspect ratio. Digital cameras produce files with an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 2:3 in most cases. But common print sizes have different aspect ratios. For example, a 4 x 6 print has an aspect ratio of 3:2; an 8 x 10 has an aspect ratio of 5:4.

To avoid having an image arbitrarily clipped by your software or photo printing service, you should crop the photo to the correct aspect ratio, the way you want it to look, prior to printing. Most of the newer software will have preset aspect ratios in the crop tool for common photo print sizes.

In Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, for example, you can enter the height and width in the options bar before making a crop selection to crop to a specific aspect ratio -- but avoid putting a number in the resolution field if you don't want the image resampled when you crop it.

If you don't have Photoshop, try using a lab such as myPhotopipe. Labs of this nature have software you use through your Web browser to crop before you order your prints. This software has a crop-and-preview tool. It allows you to see crops instantly of all photo sizes. Since Photoshop costs more than $600, this free tool can be a great option, particularly for photographers just starting out.

Just what's in the viewfinder

On my latest trip abroad to Haiti I realized not knowing the language keeps me focused on just looking for images. This is great in many respects because I am trying to understand what is going on by watching visual cues and listening to the tone in people’s voices.

Since I do not really have the verbiage to clue me in about what is taking place, I am really more focused on what I should have been doing for years. I am seeing the situation my viewers will be seeing it. They cannot hear the conversations through the printed pages or on the web.

I spent a lot of time looking for interesting visuals because I had no idea what they were saying. I would smile and nod to those who I made eye contact with. Amazing how close I felt to people when I couldn’t talk to them.

This has helped to remind me the audience cannot hear and pick up on what is going on in a still image. I must really look for those moments which communicate visually intimate moments which bring the viewer closer. Photos get better when I realize I must concentrate on what is in the viewfinder. Sure understanding what is going on can help me anticipate better, but the end results still must be what is in the frame of the viewfinder.