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CO28 Congruence

Congruence is about bringing all of the compositional elements together to resolve a photograph. Combining your intellectual intent, your emotional intent with the visual centre matching the language across the whole photograph so that it works. In this presentation Len talks about how to tie all the compositional elements together in a harmonious whole.

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CO27 Depth of Focus

Depth of Focus is often lampooned by photographers who say depth of feeling is more important. While it is true that feeling is crucial to an images success, depth of field is a compositional element that needs careful consideration. It can add depth of feeling to your artwork. Rather than let depth of field be an inevitable choice made by the camera, why not consider it as one of your active elements of composition. Len also discusses bokeh and a couple of interesting lenses that play with focus. The video camera struggled to focus during this presentation, which is a fitting tribute to soft focus photography. My apologies for this humorous technical glitch.

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CO26 Balance

Balance is an important element to consider in all artworks. Len illustrates this talk with important artworks in painting and sculpture and shows us how to achieve compositional balance. He finishes the presentation by describing how to judge the weight of various elements in an artwork.

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CO24 Symmetry

In this episode on composition Len discusses the Gestalt principle of Symmetry, and then goes on to explore the compositional elements of circles and squares. He introduces us to circular photography as a compositional device, and explains his love for the square format.

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CO21 Vantage Points

In this episode of the Composition Series Len talks about different vantage points used in life and in our art. He draws metaphors from our language of looking up at someone and down on someone. He also tackles what it is to be an equal. The bottom line of this presentation is to look at the world from a different perspective and see what you can see.

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CO20 Emotional Colours

In this episode of our Photographic Composition Series Len discusses how we relate to colours from an psychological perspective. He covers inherent properties of colours and culturally defined ones. Len even delves into sacred knowledge of colours in chakra healing.

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CO19 Colour Combinations

In this episode of Len’s Composition Course he discusses colour combinations and illustrates his talk with stills from movies that use colour in their design. He talks about analogous colours and complementary colour combinations in particular.

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CO18 Colour

In this presentation Len discusses how our eyes see colour, how we perceive colour and how we describe colour. A technical presentation that lays the groundwork for exploring photographic composition in the next episode.

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CO17 Repetitions strengthen

In the latest episode from our Photographic Composition Series, Len discusses how repetitions talk to each other. When elements talk to each other in a photograph they often make them stronger and more prominent. We as humans group similar things together.

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CO16 White

In this episode of Len’s series on photographic composition, he explores high pitch photography. He encourages you to break the rules, over expose your photographs, explore white paper, learn high key lighting and even eventually offers you some definitions of what ‘High Key Photography’ is.

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CO15 Shadows

In this episode of Len’s Composition series he discusses the importance of composing the darks and shadows in your photographs. He talks about blocking in the large shapes compositionally. He illustrates this presentation with the work of Ralph Gibson, who is known for crunching his blacks and the work of Fung Ho who shows us how to get the balance between the highlights and shadows just right.

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CO14 Highlights and Whites

The dance of the Highlights is an important compositional consideration. Our eyes are often drawn to bright areas of a photograph. We need to use these to strengthen our compositions, other wise they often weaken them. In this the 14th presentation in our series on composition Len discusses how to see and compose the highlights.

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CO11 Relationships

In this presentation in the Photographic Composition series Len discusses the Point of Power, the Rule of Thirds, Pi and the Golden Ratio. He shows how these are used in photography and art throughout the ages. He describes how these sacred ratios are derived from nature. Len also gives his advice on using them.

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