Line – Can be vertical, horizontal, curved or jagged. Examples: roads, sunsets, bridges.
Shape – Two-dimensional representation of objects. Examples: silhouetted photographs of birds.
Form – Three-dimensional representation of objects, usually through the use of lighting and shadows.
Color – Using warm or cool colors to set a mood.
Value – Having a range of grey, from very light to very dark, including black & white.
Texture – The use of lighting to bring out details of an object, making it easy to see whether a surface is smooth or soft.
Space – Either negative or positive space can be used to make a statement. Often seen when using the rule of thirds.
Principles of Design in Photography
Balance - Having balance in the composition is crucial to a sense of stability and having equally spread visual weights in the image. Asymmetrical balance – can be achieved by playing with shapes, colors and textures to make sure that the different elements in your image give a feeling of having the same visual weight. You can also achieve this by putting two subjects of different importance that contrasts with each other in terms of size, color, depth, etc. Symmetrical balance – Both sides of the image have the same elements. Radial balance – Based on a circle with all elements arranged around a central point like they are radiating from it.
Movement - The path the viewer's eye takes through the photograph, often to focal areas.
Rhythm or Repetition - When an element occurs over and over again in a composition, it creates rhythm or repetition.
Contrast - The contrast in photography is just a position of two or more different elements with the purpose of letting one element pop out compared to another. This is easily achieved through using highlights and shadows or by using complementary colors. Silhouette images fall into this category.
Pattern - Regular arrangement of repeated elements (line, shape, color) over and over to create visual excitement by supplementing surface interest.
Unity or Harmony - Unity exists when all elements in the image are in harmony or agreement. Especially when you are composing several elements, it doesn’t matter if you’re using different elements as long as each of them belongs to the composition and all these parts equal a whole.
Emphasis - Used to create a sense of visual dominance to a certain element to draw the viewer’s eye to important parts of the image. This can be achieved through differences in size, depth, and color.
Assignment
Use the grid to create your own matrix in Adobe Photoshop. There are 49 boxes, at least 20 must be your own photos! The other 29 can be from the Internet. They can be either color or B & W. Remember that the image must show BOTH the art element AND the design principle.
To differentiate your images from the Internet images... 1. Click on your image in Layers 2. Edit > Stroke 3. In pop up window, change size to 4 px, click color swatch and change color to a medium gray in color picker, Location > outside. 4. Resize (Ctl + T) to fit into box 5. If color swatch changes, click on "Eyedropper" in tool bar (7th from top) and click on outline of box to match the color.