Following on from a recent article where we gave you some tips on improving your photographs, we’d like to pass a few more pieces of advice on photography.
Great photographs make beautiful canvas prints, but taking great photographs isn’t easy; capturing that all important shot that you’ll be able to print onto canvas requires some patience.
Look out for lines
Lines and curves inject energy into your photography. Using natural occurrences such as rivers, building and roads to create lines in your pictures attract the viewer’s eye and lead them to your subject. Keep an eye out for such things and use them creatively to generate interesting images that will look great on canvas.
As well as naturally occurring straight lines, you should look for curves as photographing these makes your photos look more sensual. Sand dunes and hills for example, when used as part of your composition, add a special element to your pictures.
Watch for the horizon
It’s very important that when you’re composing your photos that you keep the horizon line level. A photo of a landscape with a slightly crooked horizon will ruin your photo, unless you’re deliberately taking the photo at an angle for dynamism.
Red-eye is the curse of the amateur photographer. You think you’ve taken the perfect photo, everything fell into place at the right time, you had the camera, you caught the moment. You think this is going to be an excellent photo, one worthy of printing on canvas in fact.
Then, when you see the final snap it’s not quite the photo your were hoping for. The old problem of Red-eye has surfaced once again as your subject is inflicted with a nasty red tint on their eyeballs.
But it is avoidable, you can take photos and avoid getting Red-eye altogether.
Red-eye is caused when the flash from your camera reflects in your subjects eye and is bounced back into the camera lens, causing the distinctive red glow. It can easily be avoided however, as the light is actually bounced back in an almost straight line. All you need to therefore is angle that line. For example, if you take the photo from a different level to your subjects eyes, such as from below or above, the light will not bounce back in the same way.
You can also have the person look at the camera, but not directly at the lens. This will mean the light will not bounce back into the lens, thus avoiding red eye.
An even easier method is, if you have a detachable flash on your camera; simply hold it above or to the side of the camera when you take the photos. This will completely break the light bounce line, meaning no red eye.
Then you’ll have a photo Worthing of a canvas print.
When you’re looking to take a photograph that will look great on canvas, you’ll want to be sure that your photos are as good as they can be. There’s no point printing on canvas a photos that is blurred, badly framed or just doesn’t live up the ideas you have for your image.
So here are a few useful tips to taking better photos, and getting the most out of your photography.
Use ‘Thirds’ in your framing and composition.
When composing your subject in your viewfinder; imagine the frame as being in three equal thirds. Placing your subject off centre, to the left or right, create a dynamic composition.
When you’re taking a photo of a moving subject, frame the shot that they are moving into the empty two thirds of the frame, leaving space within the image for them to travel into.
Close up!
Too often photographs are taken from too far away. If you’re taking a picture of your children or your pet, don’t do it from a distance. Get in nice and close and allow them to dominate the frame. Making them the focus of the picture will create a far more interesting composition. Try to think of it as a desire to illuminate any negative space. Make your subject THE subject of the photo.
Dynamic angles
A common trick to inject a bit of dynamism into the frame is to angle the camera, for example a 45 degree angle of a half body shots makes the subject of the photo go from corner to corner. This will look much more exciting on the photo, and on canvas.
Giving photographs for birthdays or at Christmas is a fairly standard practise among family members. Grandparents for example love to receive photos on cards, or framed pictures of their grand children at festive times. Be they professionally taken portraits, snap shots of the children, school photos or holiday pictures.
They make a great customised, personal gift that shows your family members that you’ve thought about it. Also the children themselves love to give photos of themselves because they know their grandparents will display them, and will enjoy looking at them.
However, rather than simply giving a photograph on a Christmas card, or a photo in a frame, you’ll get an even better reaction if you present the grandparents of your children with a photograph print on canvas.
Photos printed on canvas look far more impressive than simple photos in a frame. They’re veritable works of art in their own right and have the look and feel of a professional painting, yet still have the personal touch of a photograph.
Canvas prints look exquisite when mounted on the wall and will allow your children to give a present that says you’ve really thought about it.
According to Andy Warhol the answer yes. His painting of the Campbell’s tomato soup tin has become an iconic image of the 1960’s.
Some critics say that Warhol’s work was fake, and some even suggest that he was a hoax. However, many others believe that there is much more to his work than meets the eye.
Warhol was not just painting a tin of soup. He was expressing through his artwork the huge wave of consumerism that had taken over society. The 1950’s and 1960’s saw the birth of branding. People were not buying the tin because it was tomato soup, but because it was Campbell’s.
His work, like the brands he drew, appealed to the masses, because everybody could relate to it; from the President, to a Hollywood star to Mr/Mrs Average. Warhol was passionate about popular culture and this is why he wanted to produce popular art (pop art).
In order to define his niche in art, he needed to define his subject matter. He painted the things he loved and things he had a passion for. He was quoted as saying that he ate Campbell’s soup for lunch everyday, clearly the motivation behind his painting then!
Robert Rauschenberg, an American pop artist and pioneer of his industry, died at the age of 82 this week.
Rauschenberg, who had been ill for some time, was described by the New York Times as a ‘Titan’ of art. He was born in 1925 in Texas.
Rauschenberg was a pioneer of an art style dubbed the ‘Combines’, which merges painting with sculpture. It wasn’t until the sixties that Rauschenberg moved into pop art, inspired as so many were by the works of Andy Warhol. Rauschenberg began using contemporary photography in his art with photos of public figures, including JFK.
As well as silkscreen painting (like Warhol) Rauschenberg also participated in performance art and set design.
One of Rauschenberg’s works was a painting created on his bed quilt using household items such as toothpaste. His reasoning for this was that he had an idea and didn’t have any canvas or paint to hand.
Rauschenberg even won a Grammy Award for the album cover for the Talking Heads work, Speaking in Tongues.
An Andy Warhol portrait of Mao Zedong looks set to become the artist’s most expensive work ever when it goes on sale at auctioneer’s Christies for $120 million.
The auctioneer’s are offering the painting as part of a private sale in Hong Kong, rather than through a public auction. They claim with the pending Olympics in Beijing, the time is perfect to sell a painting of this stature in the area.
It’s helped by the fact that the popularity of Andy Warhol has significantly increased in Asia recently.
Christies also hope the sale of the Warhol painting will help to build attention around art with a spate of major New York art auctions coming up. There have been fears of a slowdown in the art market.
It is hoped that some wealthy art dealers will bid on the work, which includes contemporary, modern and impressionist. Some experts are more pessimistic though predicting that much of the work will go unsold.
Art prices have fallen in the first quarter of 2008 by 7.5%, which has come as something of a shock after prices had risen constantly for the past several years.
Brett Gorvy is the deputy chairman at Christies:
If anything, the market has become more selective, so they’re chasing masterpieces.
The painting Christies are looking to sell for $120 million is of the former communist leader Mao Zedong, and stands at a staggering 14 foot tall.
One type of photography that always look amazing printed on canvas are photos of the nude form. Taking artistic photos of a nude body isn’t something that should be rushed into however, you’ll need to make sure you know what you’re doing first.
Before you take any photos of a nude you’ll need to make sure you have all of the necessary equipment to hand, as you don’t want to waste time looking around for it when you have the model waiting. Have a room with all of the lenses, tripods and equipment required laid out to save time.
In order to save money too, you could use a simple white or black sheet as the background. Using a one-tone sheet in this way ensures that the subject is the focal point of the photograph and you’re not distracting the attention away from them with any backdrop.
Another tip is to make sure your model is as comfortable as can be by ensuring that the room is slightly too warm for you. Turn the heating up so they are not cold, goose bumps look very unsightly on film.
A final tip would be to make use of lighting to create contours and shadows on the body. Use the body as a landscape in order take some really tasteful, beautiful shots that would great as canvas prints.
In the seventies when you went on holiday you would impress your friends and neighbours with a selection of holiday slides on a projector. It was a British tradition; you’d come home from holiday and make an event of showing your slides, usually with dips and drinks.
Those days disappeared with the advent of cheaper photographic development companies, as holidaymakers preferred the more accessible photographs to the seemingly older, more stoic slides.
Showing photographs however requires that you capture your audience and again make an event of it, usually a less formal event requiring coffee and biscuits, but an event nonetheless.
However with canvas prints from your photographs the need for an event has passed, as has the trouble of having to look for your photographs or experience the uneasy silence as your guests roll their eyes when you suggest getting out your holiday snaps.
When you have the best photographs of your most recent holiday printed on canvas and displayed on your wall you can be proud of your experiences and know that any visitors will see them in all of their glory, prompting them to ask you about the holiday… which is always a better way to break into your newest favourite subject: your most recent holiday.
Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most celebrated Pop Artists of our time. He was born in 1923 in New York and was privileged to be part of an upper-middle-class family.
Despite his talents in art it wasn’t until he graduated from high school that he attended his first art class, as his school didn’t offer art as a subject. He enrolled in the Art Students League of New York where he took Summer classes under Reginald Marsh. It was here that Lichtenstein learned his love of art, so much so that he left New York to study Fine Art at the State University of Ohio.
During his time at the University Lichtenstein was forced to take three years out to fight in the Second World War.
He then returned to Ohio State to finish his studies under the tutorship of Hoyt L. Sherman, who it is widely regarded, had a significant impact on Lichtenstein’s work. After graduation Lichtenstein stayed on at Ohio State to become a tutor, where he stayed for a further ten years.
