Composition Tips

[Karl Ottenstein]

I just came across a post from Susan Sorger on the Piranesi forums that I think would be of interest to any of us who create imagery with or from ArchiCAD. Dwight, to my mind, has been the main driver for more thought behind composition, tonal quality and illumination here (and in his books) for those without an art or photography background.

Susan linked to this article:
http://photoinf.com/General/Johannes_Vloothuis/landscape_composition_rules.html

which I think has some good tips, even if the focus there is on non-photorealistic imagery (NPR), which is more the domain of ArchiCAD-friendly Piranesi
http://www.piranesi.co.uk/news/news_reviews.asp
or Photoshop than ArchiCAD. Many of the 'problems' mentioned there are problems that have been noted in this forum when renders are posted for crits.

An index of the general photography composition articles on that site is here:
http://photoinf.com/General/

If you know of other composition articles of interest, perhaps you could post links into this thread.

Cheers,
Karl

[Dwight]

A great article! Thanks.

But since many of our users are too he-man to appreciate fecund landscape techniques, there's really only two rules:

1: Think like a magazine art editor: Don't stand back a whole mile and try to put the entire universe in your view.

2: Think like a Host: Make sure they can see the front door of whatever prison it is that you are designing so that some hope remains.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing the links with the rest of us Karl!

It is amazing how great an image can be with proper composition.

And thanks Dwight for your simplified process (it does wonders).