Graphic Design Photography for New Authors

One skill self-published authors made need is making their own stock photos to make good graphic design covers, advertising, and so on. This section will talk about good skills to have in taking those photos for your later use.

Today we’re going to go over three basic parts of good photographs. The first photo we’ll use was taken of Lindsey Sterling, the pop-violinist as marketing for her new YouTube Red movie, and shows great examples of lining the eyes for focus, and rule of thirds. The other two are from a ocean photographer named Chris Kincade.

https://www.instagram.com/lindseystirling/

https://www.instagram.com/chris.kincade/

Portrait Rule of Thirds

First, we’ll go over the Lindsey Stirling photo.

The first thing we’ll look at in most of these is rule of thirds. This is where you make a grid that makes nine squares in the picture and try to put the main subject where the lines intersect, as we see here in in the photo.

The second fun idea is keeping the other eye centered (in this case the left eye). This gives the subject more power and the illusion that she is looking right here adding to the power of the piece.

Landscape Rule of Thirds and Center

Next we’ll look at Chris Kincade’s beach photo.

Firs,t we notice his use of the rule of thirds, which states that to draw more attention to a subject you want to make it line up with one of these lines when we make nine boxes across the photo like so.

Though it seems impossible, he also was able to center the main subject of his piece (No matter if you think that is the people or the wave in the back. Which is another trick used by photographers to make a picture more powerful. It also gives field of depth where the picture focuses on the nearer object to make the back contrast more.

Leading Lines and Field of Depth

Last, we’ll look at Chris’s dolphin photo.

Again, we see a great example of the rule of thirds, he used the right line and the bottom line to outline his dolphins. The main features are where those lines intersect which is the most idea way to line up subjects of a picture.

He also uses the dolphins as a natural frame to help the viewer see the other two dolphins swimming up ahead with them. This framing also makes another example of the field off depth having them be in focus to contrast the other two dolphins swimming in the back.

All these photographs show amazing skill in knowing these basic tools of photography and these examples can help us all be better photographers and designers in our own work.

Here are a few examples of my own photos that help show any everyday photographer can do with a simple phone camera.

Here we see leading lines.

Here we see field of depth

And our rule of thirds

See it’s as easy as pie to do it yourself. Just keep them in mind and it comes naturally.