The Canal and River Trust arranged a day of photography training for volunteers. The workshop was run by Louise Mills of www.goingdigital.co.uk, who runs a lot of training courses in winter when not so many people are in need of a wedding photographer. In order to accommodate all types of people and all types of camera Louise decided the best way forwards was to think about composition. She gave us these simple rules:
What is the subject? What are you trying to capture? Your photo must have a clear subject
Think about the rule of thirds, place your subject off centre, on a third or on a hotspot
Think about where you’re placing the horizon if you’re taking a landscape, bottom or top third or you can try it in the middle
Lead in lines to take your eye from the edge of the photo up to the subject
Diagonals in photos work beautifully
Odd numbers also work well
Use natural frames to draw attention to your subject
Think about the angle that you’re taking the photo from: low to the ground, over the top
Do you want to shoot in landscape, portrait or square format? of if you can’t get it quite as you want, take the photo so you can crop it later
Repetition also works well, so have a subject repeating or have lots of them
Consider colours and textures, cool colours push things away, warm colours bring things closer
So with this advice in mind we went down the Carrington Street towpath for a practical photography session. It was very cold, but we hardly noticed as we were all dashing about taking photographs. There was so much to see that we hardly knew which way to point the camera first. It was heartening to see swans, Canada geese, moorhens, mallards and coots swimming in the Nottingham and Beeston Canal so close to Nottingham City centre.
Louise will be running a volunteers workshop for the Canal and River Trust in every season of the year, roll on Spring.
Marion Bryce
24 January 2020
