“Where’s the Beef?” It’s in the Composition: a Workshop on Zoom!

Photography, like painting, is all about composition!

You cook a wonderful meal and your friends say: “WOW! That was GREAT! Delicious! What kind of OVEN did you use? You must have a great OVEN!”

You would be miffed, right? Because you know it’s not the oven, it’s the COOK who prepares a great meal. Great soufflés were prepared by Julia Childs, not by her pots and pans. And the same is true in photography: it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer who makes the image. We firmly believe you can take a good or bad picture with ANY camera!

Photography, like painting, is all about composition: the symmetry, the balance, the leading lines, the framing, the perspective, the points of interest in the image that draw the viewer’s eye. So this safari is all about training you to see and capture good composition in your own photographs.

On this 2 hour interactive workshop on Zoom, conducted by architectural photographer and WPS Director E. David Luria, we will review 17 tried and true elements of good visual art composition, principles that go back hundreds of years in paintings, long before photography was even invented!

We will discuss such elements as rule of thirds, leading lines, foreground elements, getting low and close, use of light, filling the frame, etc. by examining several dozen images that illustrate these principles. Participants in the Zoom will be asked with each image to speak up and identify what composition principles are illustrated by that image.

The images presented on the Zoom  represent many areas of photography. such as  travel,  architecture, landscapes, nature and wildlife, abstracts, nighttime, sunset, moonrise, street, fireworks, portraiture, sports and many others.  They include several images by famed French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson who was noted for capturing “that decisive moment”: when to push the shutter button to capture an action which tells a story.

The purpose of the Zoom workshop is to help clients think about their photographs before taking them, and lining up the scene so that the picture is visually interesting, a picture that draws the eye and stands out as a real work of art!

Here is what one zoomfarian had to say about the session:

David Luria is a very experienced photographer, and profoundly knowledgeable of everything photographic. Yet he is very clear in his presentation, making this 2-hour seminar on composition of photo shooting very lucid and digestible, while being highly practical and useful. Excellent!  — Richard R., Laytonsville, MD

E. David Luria is a professional photographer trained in Paris at the Parsons School of Design by a protégé of Henri Cartier Bresson. A member of the Association of Independent Architectural Photographers, he American Society of Media Photographers, and the Society of Photographic Educators, he has photographed hundreds of apartment buildings, hotels, informal portraits, and events and since 1999 has directed the Washington Photo Safari program which has trained over 41,000 clients in camera use and composition.