-framing alters the pace or energy of the shot, and how our eyes read the information. The basketball picture doesn’t have more energy because the scene or subject had more energy, no, that shot has been GIVEN a more energetic composition BECAUSE the scene had more energy, because it was logical or even accurate to do so. This is one of the most clandestine and effective biases in all of photography because it works every time and people aren’t even aware of it.  A scene can be conveyed dynamic and active, or stoic and stable. Introduce the three templates of professional photography.

-Four pillars of photographic structure: manipulation of LIGHT, TIME, SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS, and DYNAMIC VS STATIC FRAMING. There are other issues in photography, but we call these the pillars because they’re deal breakers. If you neglect any of these 4 decisions, it almost certainly will sink your shot, pushing it into “failure” instead of “success.” Again, photographers often can’t articulate why one shot “worked” and another didn’t. They just shoot a bunch and pick the one that FEELS like it worked. But the first step to mastering this medium is diagnostics. The ability to identify which decision was neglected, and therefore sunk an image comes first. Improving your shooting comes second. So when you look at images you take right now, or past images you took a year ago, if it FEELS like it just doesn’t work, ask yourself which of these decisions you neglected. It will start to become obvious. And at first you may still  continue to neglect some of these decisions (habits are hard to break) but the more obvious these diagnoses become, the more you can’t unsee these things, your shooting habits will finally start catching up.

-Light differentials: how to measure them, how to deal with them, and why they‘re useful. High Key Low Key paradigm.  Recall that differentials can be used for emphasis or archetype. High key images (upshifting exposure) EMPHASIZE dark areas, draws the eyes to them, and also have archetypal associations that include sentimentality, heavenly, heroic, clean and sterile, etc. Low key images (downshifting exposure) EMPHASIZE the light parts of the image, draw the eyes toward them, and have ARCHETYPAL associations that include stormy, dramatic, mysterious, frightening, gritty, Etc. How do you achieve each? Either by measuring the key tone and then upshifting/downshifting the exposure an appropriate amount, or by exposing more directly for the lighter or brighter part of the scene. Two approaches have slightly different uses and values. Also note the problematic nature of the term “overexpose,” as 1) it assumes there is a proper or inherently correct exposure that you’re deviating from (which there is not) and 2) WHAT is being overexposed? The picture? What would that even mean? Your picture is a conglomerate of different tones and parts. Even if you use a more neutral term like “upshifting” the exposure, you still have to have a reference point, WHAT tone is deliberately being upshifted? Perhaps the key tone.

-The parable of the tortoise.  Remember the idea of “sharing the same fate.”  If the tortoise and ground both reflect the same amount of light, they share the same fate, if you brighten one, you brighten the other, if you darken one you darken the other.  But get to a different angle, and now you have two amounts of light, which means your exposure decision is now activated, it allows you to DIFFERENTIATE two parts of the scene since they no longer share the same fate. We discussed how angle would enable or disable your use of lens, and how it would enable or disable your use of time, but here I need you to see LIGHT and exposure are not immune to that issue, it works the same way. Alignment is everything. But the initial angle on the scene also disallowed the use of another technique/strategy, which was spatial emphasis. At that first angle, the tortoise and the ground share the same fate, since they are on the same plane of space, as goes one, so goes the other. But get to this other angle, and now you can use wide vs tele, you can also sharpen the foreground OR the background OR both, and you can combine those lens effects in different ways, and you can combine ALL of those effects with different exposures.  From this angle you have as many as 24 choices as to how to structure your image. From the initial angle you have only one choice.  Same scene, same subject, same physics. But alignment is absolutely everything.  If you understand why there are 24 choices from one angle, and only one choice from another, you’re starting to see how photography REALLY works. Imagine how many people keep thinking if I buy a better camera, with a better operating system, or a sharpen lens, etc., I will improve my images. Do you see that that’s just FACTUALLY untrue. That literally isn’t how this works. But it’s to Canon/Nikon/Sony’s benefit that you believe that. But at any rate, you can start to see how all of this is eventually going to come together, how we can begin to COMBINE differentials.

Further, this is the best description of what your meter does, it doesn’t tell you how to take the picture (ever), it informs you about what kind of light differential you’re working with. This is reinforced through the portrait bellpepper experiment in which the meter is way off the handle at the time we snap the trigger, the meter doesn’t tell you you’re correct, it tells you you’re working with 7 stops of contrast, and then it ducks out of the decision making process. Other differentials such as distance and movement can be reliable gaged by human perception, but the human eye is terrible at distinguishing light differentials, particularly given that our eyes absorb light differently than a camera sensor. THAT’s what a meter is for, and somehow this has been oversimplified to the idea that the meter tells you if you are “right.”