Square Photo Shooting
Today's trend is more towards square photos so for this assignment you will take the photos with whatever dimensions your camera takes (your camera or camera phone may be able to take square photos or you can use a phone app to take and edit them, if not you will edit them later on the computer). Make sure that you have the quality set to the highest megapixel (5mp minimum) since we will be cropping.
When you take your photos, take them vertically but keep in mind that you will be cropping off one third of the photo vertically.
Photo taken by Rosse Han
When you crop, the focal point (a specific point on the photo, not a general area) has to be on one of the four focal points (red points on the right). In this example, the white highlight on the shoe string is what draws your eye first and is the focal point and using lead room, it is placed on the top right rule of third point.
The only exception where you do not have to place your focal point on a rule of third point is if you have symmetry or possibly balance like the image below.
Keep in mind that when you crop, you should only have to crop vertically. You may not crop out over half of the photo like the example because the photo will become too small and will be pixelated when you print it and thus losing many points.
This photo of Namsan has a focal point on the top right rule of third point and it follows a horizontal rule at the bottom. A good photo will follow either verical or horizontal composition one thirds and be sure to keep this in mind when shooting.
