The Power Of Scrapbook JournalingWritten by Elaine Clay
By journaling your pages you will transform an ordinary collection of photographs into a vibrant and visual storyboard - telling stories behind pictures, revealing hidden memories and emotions.It will give your scrapbooks a unique and intimate feel, it is this personal touch that turns your albums into something very special. That is power of scrapbooking journaling and why it is one of most important elements of your scrapbooks. What to write… When you are doing your scrapbook journaling think about people who will read it in future. Try and remember that they weren't there, give them as many details as you can so that they can relive your memories and stories for themselves. One favorite scrapbook journaling technique is to write using 5 W's method. - Who :: who's in photo, who took it and who else was present. It is important to name people in pictures you use. People change throughout their lives, especially children, so it is vital to tell readers who they are looking at. - What :: what is photo about? Describe what is happening.
| | Photography 101 Part 2Written by Kelly Paal
Photography 101 Part 2 Basic CompositionNow that you are beginning to understand how your camera works you can begin to understand basic composition. I know that many people that I’ve talked to think that photography is just pointing your camera and taking a photo but it’s more than that. After you understand how your equipment works you can begin to get into real art of photography and that art is called composition. Basic principles: 1. Use all of your available space. Fill image with image. If reason that your taking photo is your daughter’s beautiful face then get closer. If you’re taking an image of breathtaking valley before you. Fill frame with valley. Keep distractions out of frame. They’re called distractions for a reason. 2. Look at forms in your image. You almost have to look at people or landscape before you in their simplistic geographic forms. A good way to learn form is to practice taking photos of still life objects, that you can arrange into pleasing forms. A good photo is always a beautiful arrangement of form. Whether it’s beauty of a woman’s face, her features being forms, or a wonderful landscape, trees, rocks, and hills being forms. 3. Line or direction, motion. The direction of forms in your photos is very important. Never have action or motion moving outside of your image. It will direct eye away from your image. Diagonal motion lines are good, curves and “s” curves are better. The last two is probably way landscape photography is so popular nature is full of curves. Also never put a horizon line in center of your frame. 4. Contrast, difference between black and white. Now it is possible to have a beautiful photo with little contrast if that is your intention, this works best with color. But a lot of shots, some really beautiful shots have a nice balance of black, white, and grays. This can be manipulated for artistic purpose of course, but in beginning you want to focus on trying to take shots with equal amounts of black, white, and shades of gray. (Shoot a roll of B&W film to really learn this principle.) 5. Color, you may have to familiarize yourself with color wheel. (See my article Graphic Design Using Color for more information it’s for graphic design but first couple of paragraphs talk about basic color theory) Whether you’re shooting nature or setting up your own shots in a studio you need to know what colors go together and why. Many of us have an instinct as to what looks good. When in doubt follow your instincts. Start out by taking shots of things that you think have pretty or beautiful colors. Show photos to others and see if they agree. Photographers learn not only what they think is beautiful but what is universally beautiful as well.
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