{"id":943,"date":"2019-06-25T09:26:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T09:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=943"},"modified":"2019-11-19T14:02:28","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T14:02:28","slug":"a-crop-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=943","title":{"rendered":"A Crop a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I attend a local camera group called&nbsp;<em>Focus on Photography&nbsp;<\/em> and in our recent catch up, we discussed cropping and composition techniques.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For some time, I&#8217;ve known about the&nbsp;<strong>Rule of Thirds&nbsp;<\/strong>when composing a shot.&nbsp; I seem to have it in mind when taking a landscape shot, particularly at the coast.&nbsp; It just feels like a naturally pleasing composition.&nbsp; For example, 1 third sky, 1 third sea or 1 third sand and usually a bit of interest where a <em>third <\/em>interection meets.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In my <strong>Canon 750D,&nbsp;<\/strong>if I go to Menu &#8211; Grid Display, I can select a grid that puts the Rule of Thirds grid on my image when in live view.&nbsp; I must admit, I don&#8217;t really use this grid on camera as I find I can easily visualise thirds myself when composing a photo.&nbsp; However, it might be a handy starting point while you&#8217;re getting the hang on things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-23-08.51.16-1-1024x799.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"949\" class=\"wp-image-949\"\/><\/figure><\/li><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-23-08.51.47-1024x578.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"950\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?attachment_id=950\" class=\"wp-image-950\"\/><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One composition grid I didn&#8217;t know about was the&nbsp;<strong>Golden Ratio.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>It takes advantage of the Fibonacci curve that is often on display in Mother Nature.&nbsp; Think Snail shell (also Google it and you&#8217;ll be amazed)!&nbsp; What it does is breaks the photo composition up into a curve (see the images below), with various points of interest along the curve to draw your attention.&nbsp; I have since discovered that using the Crop Overlay function in my rather old copy of Photoshop Elements 10, I can now overlay a Golden Ratio curve onto my photos.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/golden-ratio-grid.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-957\"\/><figcaption>Image taken from  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thoughtco.com\/golden-ratio-definition-in-art-182440\">https:\/\/www.thoughtco.com\/golden-ratio-definition-in-art-182440<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-18-09.53.26-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-954\" width=\"643\" height=\"361\"\/><figcaption>When in the Crop mode, select Crop Overlay and chose from the various grid options.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-18-10.07.56-1-649x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-956\" width=\"415\" height=\"654\"\/><figcaption>Golden Ratio crop overlay in Photoshop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>So I decided to have a little practise with cropping using the newly discovered overlay grids.&nbsp; In the gallery below I&#8217;ve included 3 images.&nbsp; 1 shows the original, uncropped image.&nbsp; The next shows the image cropped using the Golden Ratio overlay &#8211; where I tried to position the head of the lady in silouhette in the centre of the curve.&nbsp; The final image shows the image cropped using the rule of thirds, where I tried to get the lady&#8217;s body on a third intersection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-envira-envira-gallery\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you see any difference?\u00a0 It&#8217;s all rather subtle isn&#8217;t it?\u00a0 Let me know if there&#8217;s an image you prefer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[10,11,16,18,28],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}