Renowned photojournalist Wojciech Grzędziński shares tips on how to make the most of your opportunitiesPlanning to go to World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, and possibly even winning a free trip to Rome if you capture that exceptional shot or piece of video? Have fun, and God bless you! But before you click the shutter, remember these 5 rules!
- Think!
It is not the camera that takes pictures; you do! Think what you want to show and what you want to take the photograph with — why you are raising the camera to your eye in the first place. Don’t just click the shutter — think of how you will tell your story with your picture. Let your picture show what you like as well as what fascinates and irritates you. A good photograph tells the view just what you are thinking and want to share.
- Light!
There is no photograph without light. If you see exquisite light, reflected and available as a painting material – use it in the photograph. The light recorded in the picture will offer it depth and charm.
- Zoom in!
Locate what is important in the photograph in a deliberate context. The basics of framing images in photography show that we focus primarily on the center of the picture and on the upper left corner. So much for theory. Fill the frame so that action takes place on the entire surface of the picture. Pay attention to the foreground and the background, and if possible think about the third ground, too, what is between both. A picture composed this way will tell more.
- Emotions!
If you follow the above advice, you will take an adequate picture. But if you capture the moment and record emotions, you will take a photograph, which is something more. It is emotions which make the picture into something unique. I mean here not only the emotions recorded by the opening of the shutter, but those evoked in the viewer.
- Come closer!
The advice by the legendary Robert Capa still holds today. You yourself may know that the lady in the picture made a funny face, but if the image is taken too far away, you’ll be the only one who does. Come up close. Do not be afraid of people. They won’t eat or bite you. Only in this way can you record unrepeatable moments and emotions; you will take fully-fledged photographs which have stories to tell.
Wojciech Grzędziński – a photojournalist, winner of many competitions for photographers, e.g. the World Press Photo. Between 2011 and 2015 he was head of the team of photographers in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland and the Polish President’s personal photographer.
