EX68 Centring
The power of the centre. We are often told not to use the centre of the image. I do struggle to figure out why we are given this advice so often. It is such a powerful spot.
We can use it boldly and with great extravagance. Or we can use it so subtly and gently.
We can also fill it with negative space, and have the composition whirl around the centre like a vortex.
An interesting experiment is to try rotating the camera around the centre whist taking multiple exposures.
This weeks exercise is going to be rather open. To see what us creatives can discover about the centre of the frame. Is indeed powerful? Is it boring as may be suggested by the Kodak packet of film used to say?
Please experiment. Take new photographs please. See what we can learn about the centre. Our goal this week is to post three photographs, that have nothing to do with each other. Their only link is that they were taken by you, and that they experiment with the geometric centre of the the photograph. This doesn’t need to be exactly measured, or it may be. It can be a loose interpretation of the visual centre or the geometric centre.
Aim to create finished art this week. Photographs you are proud to post. Lets see if we can celebrate the power of the centre in photographs. In the comments you might even make suggestions as to how you found the centre of the photograph for those of us who like a bit of accuracy. For those of us that don’t mind, go with ‘near enough is good enough for me’ attitude.
If you would like to push your technical skills you can try adding a border to your photographs and seeing if you can optically centre them in the border. The easiest way to do this is to print them to jpg from the print module.
This weeks exercise follows on closely from this weeks composition presentation on Centring. I do recommend you watch it first, but obviously you don’t need too, to participate and learn.
Please post your photographs in the Len’s Club Community Forum in the appropriate post. We will discuss the photographs next Friday in the webinar.
If you are feeling like pushing yourself, see if you can frame your artwork in a border using the optical centre of the frame. If in doubt, white works on most photographs, sometimes a key line helps some.
Is the top of the king fern trunk at the centre?
Waratah is proud to be the centre of attention and the picture area.
Rotating the camera around the centre of the lens in this multiple exposure photograph. Eight frames.
I don’t think I had really noticed this photograph until I prepared the presentation on ‘Centring’ - It really is growing on me.
Maybe the centre has nothing going on at all… is left free and aloof…
Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020
