The Language of Photography by Tom Crockett and Tim Gangwer

This How-To offers tips for selecting and arranging visual elements to communicate ideas and create memorable photographs.

Photography is a language. Like the written or spoken word, photography has its own vocabulary and its own grammar. Photography might be called an art of selection. A photographer works with a vocabulary made up of the visual elements that exist all around us. Anything we see can be a visual element.

The grammar of photography is the order in which visual elements are selected, isolated, related to other elements, or otherwise emphasized in a photograph. The choice and arrangement of visual elements are techniques a photographer uses to communicate an idea.

The effectiveness of information delivery falls along a spectrum that ranges from passive communication to active communication. To help you move your photographic imagery from passive to active, review the tips below.

Passive Image Making

Photographs are passive when a visually important idea is obscured by an unorganized picture field, an excess of unrelated or unimportant visual elements, or conflicting and confusing visual information. On the positive side, a passive image usually does not suffer from technical flaws, and the photographer has selected an important subject.

Neutral Image Making

In the neutral range of the communication spectrum, we meet our viewers halfway. Photographers achieve neutrality by filtering out unnecessary visual information with a change in point of view, and by utilizing our picture field more effectively.

The two most important techniques for neutral image making are:

1. Fill your viewfinder with your subject. Get as close to your subject as your camera's focal distance will allow.
2. Keep your background simple or use your background to reinforce your subject. Before you make the photograph, check the background and foreground of your photograph for any unimportant or confusing visual elements. If you find any, consider changing your point of view or repositioning your subject in front of a simpler background.

Active Image Making

As active photographers we look for relationships between the visual elements selected for our image. We organize our visual elements by looking for interesting lines, dramatic colors, strong shapes, and repeating patterns. This organization leads the eye into and around a picture field.

To activate your photographs consider the following:

1. Look for leading lines. Try running your camera on a diagonal. Look for lines that seem to lead one into the picture space or across it diagonally.
2. Find patterns. Look for visual elements that repeat to form patterns in your picture.
3. Pay attention to colors, textures, shapes, and forms. Are there strong color relationships in your picture? Are there strong shapes?
4. Tell a story with each image. Look for humor, mystery, suspense, emotion. Keep an eye out for odd juxtapositions and contrasts.

© 2003, ARTSEDGE. Reprinted and adapted with permission from Polaroid Education Program’s Picturing Our World: A Visual Learning Guide with a Focus on Social Studies by Tom Crockett and Tim Gangwer.