Focus on the subject!

Does a photograph need to have a subject? That's a topic that always leads to some discussion. And the answer is, it depends. It depends on what you, as the photographer, intend for the photograph. If you are trying to convey something, a message, a feeling, a mood, an opinion, an idea, with your photograph, it will help the viewer to understand if you capture their attention with an identifiable subject.

And with that said, in our photography we think it works best when the subject is in sharp focus. Portraits of people illustrate this very well. Keeping the eyes of the individual sharp and controlling the depth of field to eliminate foreground and background distractions focuses the viewer's attention on the person and helps them look "inside" for their personality.

Landscape photographs typically try to capture the beauty of a place or stir an emotion connected to the location. In these photographs, the entire panorama is the subject and, in my opinion, should be as sharp as possible.

As they say, there's an exception to every rule and the same with photography. A image without an identifiable subject and a swirl of blurred colour and shapes may be a masterpiece of impressionist art. It's up to you and your imagination only.

Focus is another tool in your photo toolbox. Learn how to focus your camera so you know what is and isn't in focus. Then use it creatively.

Another tool in the digital photographer's toolbox is Photoshop and other photo editing software packages. Digital photo editing tools are the new darkroom. We start with the image from the camera just as film photographers began with their negatives, then get to work to manipulate the image to our own ends.

The range of options using digital editing far surpasses what we used to be able to do in the chemical darkroom. We have the option of changing the size, shape, colour, tone, content, sharpness and many other characteristics of our photograph. We discussed some of the basic concepts of digital editing such as brightness and contrast, colour saturation, selections, resizing and changing resolution. We also illustrated composition, combining multiple images and text to make a poster.

There are many choices of photo editing software packages. Prices vary from very expensive to free. We used a freeware package called the FastStone Image Viewer v4.6 to demonstrate some of the basic editing concepts. You too can download and install FastStone and start working with it right away. The handout includes step-by-step instructions to get you started with FastStone for image editing. Look for the download details in the handout or search for it online.

Next week is project week and we encourage you to participate. Tell a story using photographs. Bring in ten photos with a related theme and share them with the class.

Good shooting!