CCY #22. Guide the Viewer and Flipping Photos.

Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge #22 is about how to guide your viewer and flipping your photos.

As the photographers, we have a bit a power Cee explained. “…we have the option of guiding your viewer to see the photo as you want it to be seen.  In some ways that is what composition it all about. ”

The three topics she discussed were: bright spots, S curves and flipping. Each technique adds interest to a photo and it is up to the photographer to decide how to use them. Let me show a few of my photos to explain.

For bright spot, if you look at the photos below you most likely are drawn to the lighter spot first in the photo. In these shots, the bright spots are the birds flying over the water.

And in these shots, the birds are the main action anyway. Everything else in the photo really just sets the scene.

S curves are meant to draw the views attention along the a line, to the main point. Take a look at these examples.

In each of the above photos, there is a curvy element that leads you to the main object: a tortoise, a door, or an arch way.

As a military photographer, I almost never flip photos. Technically, we are NOT allowed to alter the photos in any way whatsoever out of brightness and contrast. So when I look at these photos, the flipped versions look very wrong to me. What do you think?

Flipped

Flipped

What do you think about these techniques?

Now make sure you click the badge below to check out Cee’s challenge. There is still time to play along.

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UPDATE: This post received Cee’s Gold Star Award! (Whoot whoot! Happy dance for blogging honors.)