Le Kenneth's Photographie Compositions Principes

Where to start, Where to start?

Basic discussions of the 10 basic photography composition principles. Coming from a history of capturing elements through a pinhole camera, to the technologically advanced digital slr's, these following principles still apply. Let's start this off, shall we...

Rule de Thirds

Imagine a grid onto anything that your shooting (fancy schmancy way to saying taking a picture, take note of that) 3 Column, 3 row grid. Simple right, just line your most important element of the photograph to lay within the lines of the grid, or where the points intersect. Do this and your gold, well not really but keep on reading and find out what else you can do to make your photographs gold.

Balancing Elements

Having your main subject off-center, but being able to have a visual weight that looks correct is always key. Let's say you have a building and a landscape shot of a skyline. The main building can be shot towards the left quadrant of the grid, with the city skyline shot as the 2/3 left of the grid. This can add a visual interest and depth on your photos and has always been a part of what I shoot with. You would rarely see any center shots, done by me and many other photographers. They're too boring. Don't believe me? Take some and take some off-center and you tell me!

Building Lines

The scenery of the shot is also important. Buidlings, bridges, windows, automobiles, anything really. You can find visual lines within your photograph that can add even more depth.

Viewpoints

You can easily add visual weight onto anything you really. Taking aerial photos from a birds eyeview or even from an ants view can add interest and depth onto your photographs. Very interesting standpoints can make an interesting photograph.

Dynamic Range

High Dynamic Range, sorry man; I'm still learning this myself.

These are the basic principles that I use on any and all my photography shots.

Now go out and have some fun :)

New Trends!!!

Let's see, what's leading to the new trend here in 2011 as far as trending goes, ay. Theres a couple of topics that I've seen coming around, a lot of it is all new to 2011. I was skimming through an article from WDL (web design ledger) and came across what web design trends there are in 2011.

1. CSS3 & HTML5

CSS3 & HTML5 has been coming up in the web developing field for quite some time now, in 2011, it's almost taking over all of the web coding. There's less flash being integrating within websites now, which is always a good thing as far as compatibility and accessibility. The nitsy bitsy things that you see one some of these websites are now being integrating within the style sheet and the actual code. We all tend to love the capabilities with flash, but let's translate some of that compatibility with HTML5.

2. Simplified Color Schemes

"Simplify Everything", as said by Rich Silverstein from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. You're starting to see more defining color schemes coming across the web, shades of green, yellow, and red. I come from the Print industry, and notably seeing these schemes being pulled off on a web based mode is truly exciting. 2011 is showing less blacks, whites and shades of gray, and alternatively going with eye catching color schemes. It's a nice thing to see, most of your generic mainstream web designs are, plain, black and white. This is nice.

3. Being Mobily Connected

It's all about being mobile nowadays. Everyone and their mother has smartphones, ipads, tablets, netbooks. With CSS3, you can take mobile web design to new level, that will succeed against, most of the people you studied designing with. There's so many dedicated mobile sites that capture a vary wide audience, but it's not going to capture the whole audience. Although, It's highly thought that if you dont have an optimized web site that is mobile ready, then you're just not up to date, in 2011.

4. Parallax Scrolling

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5. Design ability for touchscreen devices, not your standard, "mice"

While, were already in the 3rd quarter of 2011, technology has become more innovative. You literally use your fingers with these amazing tablets, smartphones, touchscreens. Do you design so it's accessible to fingertip navigation?

Do you use hover actions? How about Drop down menus? Not compatible with your touchscreen devices. Even liquid styled layouts should be considered as part of your responsive developing design.

6. Depth Perception

Dimension. Parts of your website should be designed to look nearer than others, it creates a faux 3d effect, when done correct. You can literally see the elements just jump off of the screen, almost literally. 3D elements are crisp and simple, which what makes them so darn stunning.

7. Large Photo Backgrounds

As we've seen happening in 2011, large scale backdrops. Full Hi-Res images, just covering the entire site. I''ve once designed a site based on stock photos, There was a ginormous image of an older man covering his eyes, justified to the left with the text justified to the right. It captured the audience, it felt as though there was harmony that was flowing with the connection you had with the site, all with a large scale backdrop. Predominately, using a large scale photo, you can design with color schemes based on your image, which create an exhilarating feeling when it comes to continuity.

8. Whimsical Domains.

Not live, but how would you feel about a domain name as ... www.(your actual name).me

Pretty cool huh?

9. QR codes

I've been noticing this, not only online but also in the print industry. It's showing up on business cards, magazines, websites.

These barcodes are call QR, shorthand for Quick Response. It's the same concept as a barcode at a grocery store, you scan it and you receive some information that the sales clerk shows on her screen that you just paid $50 some odd bucks for bread. Sometimes those barcodes can be a little quirky. But these QR codes are amazing, they're free, they're fun! You can get them to specify a note, a phone number, a web address. As long as you have a device, smartphone usually, to scan it with your fancy shmancy app. You can have your audience translate that barcode to go to a website, to call a number, to show a note. Psshh, I've had personal QR codes on websites, business cards, flyers, a vinyl on my car.

Don't judge me.

That's a quick sum up of what's been happening until now, the 3rd quarter of 2011.

Let's talk SEO

So now-a-days every business and their mother are using the web with means of communication towards their services and products. It's not just about getting a web developer to get your cool new tie company out their onto the market. 30% of good web design must consist of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is a great way for search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. index your website to be able to be the most searchable as possible, Lets go through a quick list on some tips and tricks on SEO. Great sites have SEO! The methods used to keep your site in the top pages of google for a long time will depend on if you know how Google ranks its index. Now lets give up 20 things that can improve your search engine ranking.

1) Be Prepared. The first thing you need to do is make sure and be sure that your site is ready for Search Engine Optimization. You do not want your visitors to arrive to an unfinished and incomplete site. “Coming Soon” and “Under Construction” pages will repel them to other more useful sites.

2) Avoid Javascript. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

3) Content is King. Be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

4) Build Backlinks. If content is believed to be king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality back links using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

5) Don’t obsess over PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lowerPR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

6) Focus on Titles. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

7) Keep it Fresh! Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

8) The Key to Good Links. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a simple detail lacking “Click here” link.

9) Phrasing it Correctly. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

10) Don’t Design in a Vaccum. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. If you’re not the web designer then make sure this person understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

11) Keep Adding Keywords. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

12) Don’t Split Your Link Juice. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

13) Ditch the Long Names. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

14) Forget About Frames! Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

15) What Really Counts. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

16) Get Indexed Quickly. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take several grueling weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site, as well as submitting your site to several free search engines which submit your site to 100’s of others on one simple submission. For Example: Fast Submit SEO Site

17) Start a Blog. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three times a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

18) Quality Counts. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

19) Don’t Abuse The System. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you, due to the fact that there are many web developers that try to abuse SEO keywords.

20) Guilt by Association. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

Accessibility

Web Site accessibility is very important for many reasons.

There are millions of disabled people in the world today who use the web and there disability effects they way the web is viewed. These disabilities are categorized in several categories from visually impairments, hearing impairments, and paraplegics. This is something that we must keep in mind while we are designing a web page; Can people with these disabilities still gain knowledge from the content in the page as everyone else in the world? We must keep in mind that these people rely on the Internet in everyday life just like the rest of us, and they need to be able to access it in a way they can understand.

Plagiarism

What's all this talk going around town about this Plagiarism stuff?

Is it the act of stealing, passing off ideas or even words that someone else created? Is it the act of using someone else's product without any accreditation to the original creator? Is it the act to actually steal as in a theft?

It's been said that plagiarism is an act of fraudulent behavior.

The U.S. Law expresses this action of stealing words and ideas as an infringement on the Copyright Laws.

Plagiarism can go hand in hand with the below as basic examples of what is considered plagiarism.

• - Handing in someone else's works and ideas as your own.
• - Simply copy and pasting someone else's ideas or words and giving no credit.
• - Incorrect use of Quotations, basically not even using quotation marks!
• - Giving wrongful information about the source of that quote.
• - Even changing up words but still having the same sentence style without giving credit.
• - Also, copy and pasting a majority of words or ideas from the creator which takes up most of your work, even if you don't credit the source.

U.S. Copyright Laws on infringement can be easily avoided by making your work Original.

Please don't plagiarize.

Prevention

There are a couple ways that plagiarism can be avoided. Citing Sources correctly is a simple was of doing this...

Citing

Just having the knowledge that some ideas or words can be "borrowed", and giving your viewers the proper information of the original source can help you prevent any form of plagiarism. Citing sources gives the proper credit out the original author.

Citing correctly gives information about the author, the actual title of the original work, name and place of the company that published your copy of the source, given the date that your copy was published, the number of pages and page numbers of the ideas or words that your borrowing.

Most individuals even think that when you cite your sources, that the content that you work will make you less reputable. That's not entirely true though. When you give out credit to the original author by citing the sources, it can your viewers contrast what you wrote with what the original author had. It will actually bring out originality within your work.

Stock Images

Where can we get free stock images nowadays without any royalty payments or without "stealing" any images and getting hit with any infringement cases?

Well there's these great places that carry Stock photo's that are royalty free, there's a great adventure on these sites where you can get images from animals, architecture, people, cities, buildings, HDR photography shot, etc.

Stock images are worldly renowned for royalty free images that are used in the world of, layout design, web design, graphic design and even personal use. Ok, now theres tons of sites that offer free stock images that are royalty free. You might find some that are completely free, and also some that are point based.

Copyright ingringement is a big deal nowadays, wait, what am I saying, It's always been a big deal. Well's these companies that have Stock images so you dont have to have any worries when it comes to infringement.

Now, what I mean by free is ... their completely free. Some sites dont even ask for any registration or login requirements to get these royalty free images. YES, that means no sign up. I know that's always the best. You can simply go into these websites, browse their gallery, select the photo that you want, read the terms and conditions, and if opted you might even be able to pick the size/resolution that you want the image in, and hit download. It's that easy. It's all hell of a lot better than going straight into a search engine and stealing images or even stealing images straight off of a website.

On the other hand, there are stock image companies that offer royalty free images but going based on point system. What I mean by this is ... All the images are completely royalty free, but in order to be able to download them, you will have to purchase points. Each of the images are priced based upon these points, by catagory or even by size/resolution. Of course you will need register and create a login information in order to keep track with your points. These images that need to be "purchased" are usually are in better interest. You would have a wider variety and , better lack of term, better images.

Bleeding

How much actual thought is needed when we, designers are using print as the final media?

Does the thought of bleed ever come to thought? Most of most printing companies that deal with graphic designers have a bleed requirement, simply for the fact of the actual printing and cutting process. Through, experience and a little bit a research; a 1/2" to 1/4" bleed all around the print is required. It's always best to ask prior to sending over the final product to the print company, whether they have any bleed requirements(if they haven't stated it already). It can be a real pain when you don't pay attention to this, you could just end up with a print that's been literally cropped down.

With that said, why bother having to go back again and correctly sizing if you just ask! Bleed is a very important thing that's been overlooked but still anticipated.

The importance of Social Networking

Almost every business, group, club, mother is on social networking; either to communicate subjects or problems or just a simple discussion of some sort of medium. But, how can this benefit us as designers?

Believe it or not, a lot of businesses in the design industry that check out their future employee's social networking status. They can tell off the bat what kind of person you are and on how you put yourself out their for everyone to see on these social networking websites. Yeah, these sites can be used for entertainment purposes, or even venting out your feelings. But you have to think about your potential employers that read these blogs, posts, tweets and their feelings towards you as a designer.

It's great to be on these social networking sites to publicize your design work as your own "Portfolio", I've seen many many, blogs that designers create to maintain their portfolio online since the cost is basically, free.

Let's talk about copyrighting.

Nowadays everyone and their mother are following a trend called copyright infringement. Webster's dictionary definition for copyright reads as follows - the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something ( as a literary, musical, or artistic work). What does this mean in layman's-term? The ability to protect your stuff legally so others can be prosecuted if no permission was granted.

Even though most people that own a specific piece of design, art, logo etc. may not distribute to the public their exclusive rights of ownership of that, it's still there. There has been many cases that an individual has been prosecuted legally by simply copy and pasting an image they saw on google or on other search engines for commercial use. Although it's very simple to do, there can be many consequences to these actions.

A copyright supplies the owner a granted or limited amount of monopoly with the created copyright material that gives assurance for control over its use. Meaning, if you do decide to get an image from the internet for publishing use; find the source/owner of the image, ask permission, if asked, pay a royalty for using the said image, get it in writing, use the image with proper permission.

I will be creating a simple 5 page web page in the very near future consisting the ins and outs of copyright infringement and also appropriate channels where you can get your material copyrighted and then some !

Choosing a Web Host !!!

Jumping into the market with a great website is one thing, choosing a web host is another. I'm going to list a couple things to consider when choosing a web hosting company.

1. What is the cost per month/or year??

2. Is their a setup fee?

3. How much disk space does your hosting company provide?

4. Bandwidth size?

5. How fast is their uptime/speed performance?

3D Stuff

Ok this is just a continuation of the 3D overlook on the program that is being utilized in class. Ok so this month we've learned about using splines, NURBS, deformations, primitives, lights, Depth of Field, and the list goes on.

I learned a new little trick yesterday utilizing depth of field with a camera onto an scene. Quite hard, you have to know what your doing to get just the right feel onto your scene. I worked about 2 hours yesterday just trying to get the camera angle right and the percentages onto the actual depth of the scene. I couldn't even get a final image since I just couldn't get it right.

I will be using this little trick here and there when it comes to animation. I will post a blog of a correct image utilizing Depth of field as soon as I get everything right.

3D Observation

OK, I watched some movie throughout the week when I had the time. It was Polar Express. This movie was created utilizing the program that we use here in class. This movie was absolutely mind blowing, when I first saw the movie I didn't think anything of it but while going through this program and realizing how much time and effort the designers took to create this film is just simply amazing.

From watching through out the movie I noticed a lot of use of instances. I have learned through trial and error that creating instances of an object rather then actually just copying it can make the whole piece move with more ease as the program doesn't have to calculate all of the objects but just one. This can be very helpful on a time crunch situation.

I noticed all of the detail that the designers put forth in this, From the wavy grass on the ground to the hair on all of the characters. It was just mind blowing. The use of lighting to create specialty effects caught my eye during the beginning of the movie.

ProjeKts

Ok, Heres some images of all of the 3D designing that I made so far. Let me know what you all think !

3D Experience (cont'd)

Well folks, heres the three projects that I have been working on ...

3D Experience

Alright, Let's see... The next two month's we will be going over anything that has to deal with 3D design. We are working in a 3D environmental program made by Maxon called Cinema 4D.

Well, a couple designs were already created using this magnificent program, but enough with the small talk. let's go with the details of modeling within a 3D environment. Creating models using primitive objects could be quite a task at times, so we learned how to create objects utilizing splines and NERBS. After creating a few primitive objects and adding deformations, I kinda got a little bored with that so ... Once I started using Splines and NURBS, it was my world. I was able to create ANYTHING. It's not even just creating the Model, it also goes a little in deep depth of lighting and camera angles.

Thus far, messing around in a 3D environment it has been very fun just messing around with stuff here and there, creating things from scratch or from a base point. Up until now I've only created 2 Models, and currently in the process of creating an organic object and bringing it to life in a 3D environment. I will post the 3 finished products as soon as the 3rd Model is completed.

But this is the beginning of my experience with working with 3D.