Not an Artist

I am not an artist. I can’t paint, I don’t sculpt and I know next to nothing about photography. But who cares? I’m a journalist not an artist, right? Wrong.  Today’s multimedia journalists are required to be both reporters and photographers making it essential for them to know the basic principles of composition.

Understanding the challenge facing journalists, my professor decided to teach our class the basic principles of composition.

At first, it was intimidating having to think about things like contrast, framing, lighting and exposure. I quickly learned, however, that photography is all about experimentation and practice. There are nor hard and fast rules.

To my surprise, most of the photos I took actually turned out half decent. I decided, however, that some of them could use a little tweaking. This involved using Photoshop.

Until today, I had only used Photoshop a handful of times, usually unsuccessfully.  There are so many options and tools that I never knew what tool to use or how to use it. I usually wound up making the same changes to all of my pictures. The end result, a collection of photos that looked strikingly similar.

This time, as I edited my photos, I tried to apply some of the principles of composition. I separated the foreground from the background and created a focus using the blur tool. I tried to fill the frame and obey the rule of thirds by cropping. And I played with color hue and saturation.

I still have far more to learn about photography and Photoshop, but I feel like I have made progress and that my work from now on will be better as a result of what I have learned.