One of the benefits of my new backwards weeks is that I can sit down and learn new things, instead of rushing through a photoshoot.

That’s what I did this weekend.

I’m working through two books. One is a Photoshop training guide. Nothing exciting, but I’ve learned a ton of things about selecting objects and a bit about creating filters. All very useful. And that was my task for Sunday – learn more about selecting objects. Especially, figure out how to select them without grabbing all kinds of bits of the background I don’t want in the object I do want. I think I’ve learned a lot – we’ll see how it plays out in Rosie’s episode.

The other book is much more exciting. It’s called Cinematic storytelling, and it’s all about the kind of visual language used in movies to convey ideas through images alone. I’ve looked through two chapters so far, and I’m going to try to put at least one of the ideas into practice this week.

The first chapter is about arranging objects along the X, Y, and Z axes. Sounds dull, but it’s really interesting. Because we read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, movement in different directions along these axes elicits different emotions. According to the book, a cinematic standard is to introduce good guys from the left, and bad guys from the left. Another idea that falls out of this is the sense of ease in motion. An object moving from the top left to bottom right has the feeling of easy movement, while the most difficult movement is in the reverse direction – bottom right to top left.

I’m not sure how all of this will play out in Rosie’s next episode, but I realized that I could really have used one trick of moving along the Z axis in her first episode. Instead of suddenly introducing the very large bird right beside her, it would have been more interesting to introduce him as a small object in the background first, where you could imagine he was a normal sized bird – and then move him closer to reveal his size.

The second chapter had to do with composition. One trick I’ve used already is directing the eye with light and shadow. They also suggest playing around with orientation (like characters pictured upside down) and balance and imbalance.

So, that’s been my weekend. Lots of movement, but no photos so show for it. Here’s an unrelated picture I took over the weekend – Jinjur with her new bulldog

He’s absolutely perfect for her, and altogether one of the most satisfying small expenditures I’ve made. He’s solid and sturdy and has oodles of character.

I’m planning on taking some shots on Monday and Tuesday, so I should at least have most of my non-Photoshopped images taken by my next post on Wednesday.