- 3,615
- Liverpool
- leeislee
Ok, before i start this i decided to create a seperate thread for this guide instead of adding it to my original Compositional Tips & Techniques guide because having too much stuff to read through will probably put people off from reading it at all.
So keeping this short(ish) and simple will hopefully, encourage more people to give it a try.
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I want to make clear that this isn't a tutorial per sé, It's not a do or die, definitive guide to photography in GT5 nor real life. It's just some of the processes I go through with my actual real life photography that can translate well into creating more polished work with your photomode photos from GT5. (If you really want to learn about the many aspects of Composition there are plenty of tutorials online)
I'm not going to go into detail about how the "Camera" in GT5 works. There is a great guide to it HERE. It's well worth taking a look at if you're not sure what all the jargon on screen means.
I dont claim to be great at this GT5 photo lark but I hope some of you can read this and at least apply some of it to your own photos.
If you're not interested in learning...please feel free to leave this thread now!
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Like i mention in the intro to the original Compositional Tips & Techniques thread, this guide contains things i do when i take photos, it's one of the first things any aspiring photographer should work on. Poor composition WILL ruin a photo. Anything that isn't pleasing to the eye will make the viewer enjoy your shot a lot less than if you had spent a little bit of time applying these easy composition "rules".
You may well hate everything i share here and continue doing it your own way, and of course, that's fine. Whatever makes you happy.
Ok, here goes...
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The general, most common rule of composition is the 'Rule Of Thirds'. The easy way to describe it is the way a picture can be split up into three parts, horizontal and vertical leaving you with 4 lines or 9 individual boxes.
This is what the Rule Of Thirds looks like...
Most people consider that the best way to utilise this rule is to place the pictures main elements on one or more of the lines...but i'll get to that later.
There are many more composition "Rules" you can use...
Centre guides
The Fibonacci Spiral
Diagonal Centre
The Golden Diagonal
The problem with all of these "Rules" is that it's hard to know which one to use and more importantly, they can cancel each other out if you try to follow one over the other.
If you see them all at once you can see the problem...
So, let's find a way to split them up and see what works best for us.
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Now, you will find loads of Photography snobs who will almost vomit at the sight of the main subject in a picture placed dead centre.
I've dealt with these type of Photographers before and if you ask me, it's just their narrow minded, rigid views. The best photographers can adapt their rules and techniques to make the best picture possible for any given scenario.
So if you look at the "Center and "Diagonal" Guides you can see that the main intersecting lines are dead centre in the picture but this can also be used to great effect and you will see examples of centre placed cars later but i'll admit, i don't know many people who follow these rules, i certainly don't. If i want things placed in the centre of an image i still think of the rule of thirds.
But anyway, first we'll stick to my three favourite and the three i use 99% of the time. These are:
- The Rule Of Thirds
- The Fibonacci Spiral
- The Golden Diagonal
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The Rules Of Thirds
You can, if you really want to think of this as 9 boxes to put your car into but it is the correct way to think of them as LINES....no boxes though please!!
People do place the main element in these boxes, whether it's a car, a person or whatever and even though it can work, it can look pretty bad most of the time.
So thinking of them as intersecting lines you can begin to really improve your composition. The horizontal and vertical lines themselves can be where you place your car but the most common way to do it is to place your car on one of the interecting crosses.
In this example you can see an example i see often here on GTPlanet and as you can see it doesn't fit well within the rule of thirds.
It just looks horrible!
Now not only does it look bad because some of the car is cut off but having it so low in the shot and just slightly off centre makes it really uncomfortable to the eye.
Now look what happens by taking the same shot, and just moving it up and over so that the car sits nicely on one of those crosses.
i'm sure, i hope you'll agree that it's alot easier on the eye.
Now, here is another example of a shot that could be improved.
Now without me even telling you i bet you can see the problem. The car is too close to the corner of the frame, a little movement will make it look better...
This next example is one of the times placing you car dead center looks great even though those some photographers would disagree.
Now lets look at a different example of this rule. If you ignore the crosses/interections and just focus on the individual lines, you can still get great results.
These two pictures are far too cramped. The car is pushed almost out of the frame creating an odd look to the shot.
You may be thinking that no one takes pictures with cars pushed to the side, or even with bits cut off but sadly they do. It's very common and easily avoided.
You'll see now that by placing the car on the vertical lines and not on the crosses it can make these poor shots above look better.
And again, placing the car in the middle still looks alot better than the originals!
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The Fibonacci Spiral
The Fibonacci spiral can be abit more tricky to imagine as you're shooting but it will produce great results.
If you place the origin of the spiral over your car or whatever you're shooting you should get those great results.
This picture was composed using the spiral...
Hmm...you may not see it but now look at this...
Another example
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The Golden Diagonal
This one is harder to get good results with and as such, i tend to only use it after i have used one or both of the other two.
Like we saw earlier,
Hopefully you can see how the golden diagonal rule is reflected by the hill on the left and the line coming from the car up into the mountains in the background.
It can be used to compose those more extreme angles but like i said, i don't use it as much as the others.
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Combining the rules to great effect
Yes, you can combine these rules to good effect, although people including myself like to stick to one or another i do enjoy sticking a few together to make sure one of more of my pictures elements sit better in the shot and make for a more pleasing picture.
I'm sure some of you would have noticed already that the three "Rules" i follow all produce similar results, they all tend to place the car on one side or the other with other elements dotted along the lines of crosses.
This is of course what i WANTED to do and set out to achieve becuase to me, they look good.
Using the Ferrari from before you can see how The rules of Thirds and the Fibonacci spiral have been used together.
Another example.
Another example, this time using horizontal thirds and the Fibonacci spiral
This last example contains the thirds, fibonacci and golden diagonal rules!
Phew!
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One last thing
SPACE!
Don't forget to leave some room around your car. Seeing photos of cars getting crushed by the frame or cars slammed into one side or another.
Examples
It doesn't look good so remember, abit of room around the car really helps.
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All of these so called rules can be ignored if you wish and you should always do whatever you want if at the end you can look at the picture and enjoy it.
But if you are interested in using some kind of method in your madness then by following these rules will start you off a treat.
Using these rules of composition will result in your pictures having a certain look...By using other ideas and experimenting with your shots you can achieve brilliant and unique results.
Don't lock yourself into one technique, explore and experiment.
If this has got you interested in composition and you want to add some more tricks to your bag then please have a read of my other compositon guide HERE
Feel free to complain, disagree and generally kick up a stink over this thread or ask questions, share your own ideas and even share your own awesome photos!
👍
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