 Do you ever wonder how photographers decide how to set up their photographs, so what to put where and why? This process is called composition, and it basically is how you put together a photograph. The definition as it would be found in maybe most sort of dictionaries would be something along the lines of the placement and arrangement of the visual elements or the ingredients in a work of art or a photograph. I've put down here putting together as well would be another way of defining composition. It's basically how you arrange the photograph. And we'll talk a little bit about some examples here in just a second, but first of all it might just be good to set this definition up because it's going to be an important element of this course. We have sections of this course called composition and other courses that are more technical and cover some of the more technical aspects of photography. One of photography is both an art and a science, and so this composition bit is a little bit more the art photography. Now let's take a look at one of the fathers of kind of modern composition in the western tradition at least, not necessarily everywhere in the world, but this guy, his name is Vermeer. Vermeer was a very famous Dutch painter, I'll put Dutch right there, and he lived in the 1600s, so in the 17th century, in the 1600s. Vermeer was really famous for his compositions. He has many much more famous images than even this one here to the right, but Vermeer is famous for choosing the way that he portrayed his people would be very clear or the way he portrayed scenes was very clear and set up and followed many of the rules that you would now follow as a photographer. This is actually a self-portrait of sorts right here where he, and I think he called it the art of painting, and he's just actually, it's just a painting of himself painting someone, and here to the right you've got an image that follows many of the kind of traditional rules of composition. You can see here, it actually follows what's called the rule of thirds, and we'll talk about that in a separate lesson. You can see the horizon is on one of the thirds in the image, you can divide this up here, and also these people fall on a thirds line as well. So there's a lot to talk about, we'll get more into the details of the different rules a little bit later, but right now we're going to stick to the basics, the basic elements of design and composition, which are really important to understanding the things that we'll talk about in later lessons. Now this image has just about all of the elements of design in them, and there are quite a few, there's something like seven or so, and we're going to start out by talking about lines. So one of the most important things that you're going to need as a photographer, you're going to need to be able to look for lines. So you can see in here lines are all over the place, and we're going to write it right here because I've got a dark color. So lines are really important. You're going to want to watch when you're taking photographs to find lines that are interesting and appealing. Along with that, your lines are often going to lead to a focus point. That's something we'll talk about separately in another lesson, but you'll want to pay attention to the way lines kind of interact with focus points and with the way that you read a photograph. You also want to look for shapes. So here, for example, you've got a circle in the middle. You also have all these really great spokes in this image. So you've got lots of different shapes going on here. You've got the shape even of a human, and you've got this line across the bottom as well, this very strong line, which also creates a sort of positive and negative space, which we'll talk about in a little bit of a second here. So we're going to want to write shapes on here somewhere. I'll put it right here. I hope that you guys can all read this because it's hard to write on a rainbow background, actually. It's hard to find a color to match. You also need something, speaking of colors, you need color or you need tone. So if you don't have colors, then you'll take tone. So in case you're shooting in black and white, you'll then be using tones. So color or tone are also important. You need texture, which you're kind of seeing down here on the bottom with this is actually an image of a hot air balloon in Turkey that's being inflated, I believe, and this person is standing here sort of picking up the lines and getting it all ready. And here on the ground, the tarp or the balloon part of the balloon is laying on the ground, and it's all ruffled up, and you've got a really cool texture. So texture is another one. This is number four. So we've got there, we've got four. One was our lines, two was shapes. Three is color or tone. Four was our texture. We've also got form. So form is basically kind of, it's trying to show the 3D element of something. So here, for example, this image is kind of hard to tell what form it has. And actually you're inside of this hot air balloon, I believe. So when you're looking at it, it's actually kind of hard to tell that. But one place where you do see form is right here in the foreground. You can kind of see that there is a little bit of space here at the bottom, and it's kind of giving you a sense of space. And the size of the human is also an example of form. You can kind of see that he is not all the way inside of the space. He's not all the way at the back, but he's also not close to you. He's quite far away. And it also gives you an idea of the size because you know, okay, unless this is a really small person, this is a really big space. This is huge. So you want to think about ways of using form. And I'm just going to put 3D next to that. You want to try to show the shape or the space that you're working with. So that was number five. Now the next thing you want to be looking for is value. So value is related to color. We'll kind of put it over here in the color side of our image. We'll put value, that's the wrong color. We're going to have to see if I can find a better color. Let's see here, I'll go with a red, and I'll put it on blue. Value, so this is number six. Value is again related to color. And it has to do with sort of the tonal range of something. So it has to do with, not even the tonal range, how do I put this? Value has to do with, I guess, shading. So it's kind of emphasizing form. And so value kind of is a space that fits between color and form. So maybe, for example, value, a good example of value is down here. You can kind of see as the hot air balloon is expanding, it's kind of getting a little bit more, it's kind of bowing right above the earth. And you can kind of see that there's this sort of dark spot right here. And this is kind of showing that the balloon is sort of bending at the edge in a way. The color gets a little bit darker as it gets closer to the ground. Because it's just lifting off the ground, it's not getting as much light as this up here, which is getting full sunlight, for example, up here at the very top, I'll circle it in red. And you pay a lot of attention to what I'm using here for colors. You can also see here these wrinkles are actually an example sort of of value. The color changes because the wrinkle is catching different sort of pieces, different sort of directions of sunlight, and creating little shadows that kind of give you an idea of your form. So the value, the color value is sort of defining your form and giving you an idea of the space. Form is also, form and value are also sort of evident here, where you can see that actually it's getting darker as you're moving back into the balloon. You can see that less light is making it back. You can see in the front, the colors are tiny bit brighter than they are back here. And these are naturally darker colors, blue and purple and things like that. But they're also just a little bit less lit, and you can see that according to the value. And then there is space, which we've talked about a little bit here with form. You can kind of see that the photographer used form and space kind of together in this instance to create the feeling of massiveness that is the feeling you would have if you were inside of this balloon. So we're going to write in space as our number seven. So you've got all these things. Let's do one more quick review. You've got lines as number one. We've got shapes, color, tone. We've got, that takes us down here to number four, to texture. Then we've got form, and we've got value, and we've got space. So these are all things that you're going to be using when you're taking a photograph and things that you're going to want to use as tools in your toolkit. Now your image doesn't have to be anything particularly massive or expansive or special, like a hot air balloon blowing up to have some of these elements or all of these elements. You can see here that we've created a line, for example. And we're following what's called the rule of thirds. So we've got here elements that are following on these sort of lines right here. And you've also got some texture here. You've got these trees all in the background. You've got texture. You've got shape, obviously, just like with everything. You've got boxes and things like that. You've got space. You can kind of see the distance from here in the foreground to here in the background. So you've got lots of different things happening, and these are all part of composition. They're all things that you can use to make strong photographs, even of everyday moments, like looking out over the city. All right, that was your introduction to composition. We're going to be doing a lot of other lessons about composition and getting more into the details of that here at alversity.org.