The Power of the Frame: Easy Image, #5

By José María Castillo-Pomeda

Beauty is a subject that has obsessed man since ancient times. While the concept of "the beautiful" is true is relative and depends on each social group and each era, it is also true that our perception of beauty is subject to the harmony of the measures. In any facet of our life, we instictively seek harmony and balance.

Why, before two seemingly equal or similar images, one attracts us more than the other?

The information they transmit to us is the same but... one is better, we like it more... The answer is inside, in its geometry, in its structure, in short: in its composition.

By studying the basic components of an image, the fundamental elements of visual communication, we find a universal language. Knowing how to recognize them in our frame, relocate them and compose with them is as much or more important than the correct handling of the camera.

There is still for some the common place that the image does not articulate a language itself, it does not go beyond being an illustration and that it is necessary to "explain" it.

I once heard José Saramago, affirm the absolute superiority of the word over the image and condemn the old saying "worth a picture more than a thousand words" to the garbage can. This view, which seems logical in a Nobel Prize for literature, can underline the superiority of written language in the field of abstraction or mental creation. But it is to want to close your eyes (and never better) to the communicative and poetic value of the image. Of course, this controversy settled it, already in the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci when he said: "Write the name of God next to his image and see where they look," (da Vinci 187:98)

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jan 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071526927

Book preview

The Power of the Frame

José María Castillo-Pomeda

––––––––

Translated by Ulises Campos Rodriguez 

The Power of the Frame

Written By José María Castillo-Pomeda

Copyright © 2019 José María Castillo-Pomeda

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Ulises Campos Rodriguez

Cover Design © 2019 José María Castillo-Pomeda

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOTO oficial JOSE MARIA José Maria Castillo-Pomeda has been immersed in the world of images for over forty years. Has done most of his career as a producer on Spanish Television and as a freelance photographer (you can see part of his job on www.castillophoto.eu) with incursions on publicity field.

On his teacher-side he has imparted photography and television production lessons in the CEV, RTVE Institute, Villanueva University and Francisco de Vitoria University.

He has written several books on this topic: Elementos del lenguaje Audiovisual, Televisión y lenguaje audiovisual, Teleperiodismo en la era digital, three editions of Televisión, Realización y lenguaje Audiovisual (text of reference in many Spanish speaking universities), La composición audiovisual. Del Renacimiento al  3D, Cultura-audiovisual-LOMCE I y II (high school text).

In this same collection he has published, besides El poder del encuadre, Luz, Smartphone, ¡Acción!, Domine su cámara digital, La realización de Cine y Televisión, Enciclopedia Digital de la Radio, el Cine, la Fotografía y la Televisión, El poder de la luz, iluminación del rostro y la figura, El os hará libres. Tu amigo el smartphone, and Teleperiodismo digital. Comunicar en directo.

Besides, he has imparted and is currently doing it, on line and in person, about professional improvement in TVE and several autonomic and local channels.

See information www.josemariacastillo.es, José_María_Castillo_Pomeda).

PROLOGUE

I maintain a solid friendship and an enormous personal care with the author, and I hope that both of that characteristics do not stop me from being impartial in the joyful task of giving a prologue to this work.

Our relation comes already from a time back, when he was studying in Audio-visual Communications’ branch and attended to my classes. I remember that even at that time he was from those few students whom excelled among the others and it was easy to  intuit that with his capacity of effort, firmness and time he would become, as it couldn’t be in any other way, in a good professional in the field of television, photography, of decency and as a writer.

With great accuracy, the author gives to anyone who can collaborate in the creation of an audio-visual work an amount of knowledge that, without any doubt, will help them to reach that so wished and wanted goal in a very satisfactory way. Because of its contents and development I deduce, and I don’t think I’m guessing wrong, that this work hasn’t been thought or created to be directed for just one and only sector. This treatise is, without any doubt, as beneficious for audio-visual communication students as for those who study Publicity and journalism, for anyone whose interested in image-related themes.

I want to highlight something very important in this work: of how J. M. Castillo has always present that concept we know as the double value of the visual image: Science and Philosophy.

With the contents as Science the author takes us to the knowledge of things by its principles and causes, which allows us the searching and measurement of the facts, giving us at the same time a series of technological knowledge related to the intentionality of this work.

From the field of Philosophy, he shows us the Art as the virtue or faculty to that using the image we could be able to imitate or express the material or the immaterial, and to can create copying or fantasizing. Of the aesthetic values and of the personal attitudes, of the human impact of images. All this will allow us a fair subjective interpretation as much of the work as of the own.

José María Castillo drives, with a sure hand, the reader through the development of human knowledge, exposing clear and reasonedly, a whole series of facts and happenings that allows to understand the canons in which a correct framing and composing of the image is grounded.

The Power of the Frame doesn’t pretend to be a dogmatic work, nor to limit the creative freedom, what it seeks is to develop the capacity of expression through images coming from solid basis.

This work, as the rest of this collections, its completed with abundant and enlightening illustrations that helps to a fast comprehension of the texts that are clear, ordered and exemplarily redacted. Many of the illustrations, photographs and drawings have been elaborated by the author himself, which makes even more meritorious his labour.

I won’t elongate any more this preamble, I don’t want to steal time to the reader that, without any doubt, sure is wishing to get into subject.

As a farewell, I want to congratulate José María Castillo for this new title of the collection and to ask him to gift us soon with another one.

Francisco Madurga

Director of Photography and University Professor

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION

1- CONCEPTS AND PARAMETERS

1.1-FRAMING?

1.2-CONCEPT OF COMPOSITION

1.3-TO FOCUS

1.4-THE PERSPECTIVE

1.4.1-GIOTTO’S REVOLUTION

1.4.2-PERSPECTIVE AND THE THIRD DIMENSION

1.4.3-LEONARDO: CAPTURING THE ATMOSPHERE

1.4.4-DARK CAMERA: BEGINING OR SOLUTION?

1.5-IMAGE'S FORMAT

1.5.1-THE RATIO OR WIDTH/HEIGHT PROPORTION

1.5.2-HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL AND SQUARE FORMATS

1.5.3-COMPOSITION IN THE PANORAMIC IMAGE

2-THE HUMAN VISUAL PERCEPTION

2.1-PROCCESS OF THE VISUAL PERCEPTION

2.2-THE EYE IS NOT AN OBJECTIVE: CENTRAL AND PERIPHERICAL VISION

2.3-THE RETINAL PERCEPTION

2.4- VISUAL ZONE CAPTATION

2.5-DEPTH PERCEPTION

2.5.1-MONOCULAR INDICATORS

2.5.2-BINOCULAR INDICATORS

2.6-PERCEPTIVE CONSTANCIES

2.7-THE GESTALT AND THE VISUAL PERCEPTION.

2.8-THE GESTALT LAWS

Proximity law

Similarity law

Law of good continuity or of the uniformity

Closing law

2.9-SUBLIMINAL IMAGES. THE GESTALT AND THE UNCONSCIOUS.

3-THE THIRD DIMENSION

3.1- POINT OF VIEW AND PERSPECTIVE.

3.2-REALITY THROUGH THE OPTIC

3.2.1-FOCAL DISTANCE AND VISUAL ANGLE

3.2.2-LUMINOSITY AND f NUMBER

3.2.3-DEPTH OF FIELD

3.2.4- HOW DOES OBJECTIVE'S FOCAL DISTANCE AFFECTS THE PERSPECTIVE

Normal objective

Wide angle

Telephoto

The Zoom

4- IMAGE’S VISIBLE STRUCTURE

4.1-THE FRAMING

4.1.1-WERE DO WE LOOK?

4.2-FRAMING ATTRIBUTES

4.2.1-CENTRE OF MAXIMUM INTEREST

THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION IN THE CENTRE

THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION NEAR THE EDGES

THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION UNCENTRED IN A STRONG POINT

SEVERAL ATTENTION CENTRES

4.2.2-SIZE WITHING THE FRAME

4.2.3-INNER BOUNDARY OF THE FRAME

4.3-BALANCE AND VISUAL WEIGHT

4.3.1-SIZE:

4.3.2-POSITION:

4-3.3-COLOUR:

4.3.4-TONE:

4.3.5-SHAPE:

4.3.6-TEXTURE:

4.4-SYMMETRICAL AND ASYMETRICAL BALANCE

5-THE INTERNAL GEOMETRY OF THE IMAGE

5.1-THE GOLDEN RATIO.

5.2-THE PHI NUMBER (Φ), THE KEY TO HARMONY

5.2.1-ORIGIN AND A LONG ROAD.

5.2.2- FIBONACCI’S SERIES.

5.2.3-CALCULATION AND APPLICATION OF THE GOLDEN SECTION

5.2.4-THE GOLDEN RECTANGLE.

5.2.5-THE FOUR STRONG POINTS AND THE LAW OF THIRDS

6-THE LINES THAT STRUCTURE THE FRAMING

6.1-THE HORIZONTAL LINE AND THE HORIZON

6.2-VERTICALS

6.3-DIAGONALS

6.4-CURVE LINES

7-PICTURE ATTRIBUTES

7.1-BACKGROUND AND FIGURE

7.2-THE TONE

7.3-THE COLOUR

7.3.1-COLOUR’S NATURE

7.3.2-COLOUR DESCRIPTION.

7.3.3-MIXING COLOURS, ADITIVE AND SUSTRACTIVE SYNTHESIS.

7.3.4-LIGHT QUALITY. COLOUR TEMPERATURE.

7.3.5-TO BALANCE THE COLOUR TEMPERATURE

7.3.6-COLOUR SYSTEMS OR MODELS

7.3.7-THE CHROMATIC COMPOSITION, COLDS AND WARMS, INCOMINGS AND OUTGOINGS.

7.3.8-COLOURS SYMBOLOGY

THE RED

THE GREEN

THE BLUE

THE YELLOW

BLACK AND WHITE

7.3.9- COLOUR ARMONIZATION

7.4-TEXTURE

7.5-THE RYTHM

8-THE MOVEMENT IN THE  IMAGE

9-FRAMING ESTRATEGIES

-BIBLIOGRAPHY

-RELATED WEB PAGES

INTRODUCTION

Beauty is a theme that has obsessed the men since the most remote antiquity. While it is true that the concept of the beautiful is relative and it depends on each social group and each age, it also is that the beauty is contingent to the harmony of measurements. On any facet of our life, we instinctively seek the harmony and balance.

Why is it that, before two images that are apparently the same or very similar, one can attract us more than the other?

The information they transmit to us is the same but... one of them is better, we like it more... The answer is within its interior, in its geometry, in its structure, all in all, in its composition.

By studying the image’s basic components, the fundamental elements of the visual communication, we found a universal language. Knowing how to recognise them in our frame, re-ubicate them and compose with them is as or even more important than the right handling of the camera.

There are still some people who believes in the common place in which the image does not articulate any language by itself, that it doesn’t go further than to be an illustration and that it needs to be explained.

I personally did listen in certain time to Jose Saramago affirming the absolute superiority of the word over the image, and to condemn the old saying an image is worth a thousand words to the garbage. This point of view, that seems logic on a Literature’s Nobel Prize, can point out the superiority of the written language in the ambit of abstraction or mental creation. But it means closing the eyes (saying it at the best moment ever) to the communicative and poetical value that image has. Of course that this polemic was saved already in the Renaissance by Leonardo da Vinci when he said, write the name of God next to his image and notice where do they look. (da Vinci 187: 98)

1- CONCEPTS AND PARAMETERS

FRAMING?

Everybody knows how to frame. It only takes to pick up the phone or camera, look through the little screen and that the character or person whom your taking the picture is within that screen. Everybody knows that you just don’t cut the feet, and that’s enough, and that the person is right in the centre. Meaning, we will use the camera as if it was a shotgun and we wanted to give a shot to our model right between the eyes.

If you think that you have done really good by reading, because you’re totally wrong.

Fig.1. Framing as hell.

A correct frame is the least you can ask from an image, whether it is a still or mobile, photographic, a video or a cave painting. Sorry, the artists that left to us their work on the walls of certain fortunate caves didn’t went framing... because they didn’t know the vedutta.

It seems really weird today, but the fact of watching the scene through a window (because that’s what the visor really is) doesn’t appears in art history until the Renaissance (at West, because at East the concept is different, as we will see). Until then, the painters interpreted reality as it suited better and not as it really looked, then the renaissance painters are the first to delimit the space, framing reality (looking through the vedutta, the window) and, therefore, choosing what it really interested them to show and leaving out of the frame the rest.

Actually, that is framing, to make a process of selection in which it’s important not just what is inside the frame, but also what is left out of it (off space) and what is partially shown or suggested.

About the concept of window the director of photography Nestor Almendros, in his book Días de una cámara, makes some clarifying observations:

"I need the square, the framework, I need its limits; in the art, without limits there are not artistic transposition. I think that the square was a great discovery. The man in the Stone Age, at Lascaux or Altamira, didn’t frame-worked his paintings. And what it counts in the two-dimension arts is not only what you