Photo Olympics

Let's go for Gold and explore the Elements and Principles of Art through the lens of Photography! In this lesson, we’ll review the elements and principles that you learned in Visual Art Comprehensive I, challenge you to identify the elements & principles as used in the medium of photography, and apply your knowledge to create your first set of photographs for the course!

Before You Begin- Let's Test those Art Skills!

There are seven elements in art. They are color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value. The eight common principles of art are balance, emphasis, variety, rhythm, unity, movement, proportion, and pattern. Many of these concepts are not only related to one another but also overlap to create an artistic vision.

The lesson you are about to begin will teach you all you need to know about the basics of art and photography.

You have Skills!

Do remember that quiz you took - about what kind of photographer you are? Well - regardless if you are a "No Clue Noah" or a "Professional Pete", you will want to review the basics of composition and design. In this lesson, we’ll review the elements and principles we learned about in Visual Art Comp I - we will do some practice to be sure you have the knowledge down and then work on applying your new skills to photography!

The Elements of Art

The elements of art are the building blocks of all artwork. Throughout this course, you will become very familiar with these elements, so it is important that you are introduced properly. Take some time to scroll through the presentation below to review these elements and understand the role they play in creating artistic compositions.

Introducing the Elements

Apply the Elements

Now that you have reviewed the elements of art let's take a closer look at how to apply them to photography. For each example, there will be more than one element present but try to identify the most important or dominant element.

What makes each a strong, unique, and compelling photograph?
How are these photographs set apart from just a snapshot?

Watch the presentation below and be sure to take notes! You’ll need this information for your Module 1 Journal.

The Principles of Design

The Principles of Design govern how the elements are used to create a composition. The principles are akin to sentence structure – there are rules for organizing words to clearly communicate in a language. After we master those rules, we sometimes choose to break them. This could be for emphasis, to conform to a particular situation, or just because we want to. The same is true for the principles of design. First, you master the rules, then you can choose to break them.

Click through the slideshow below to learn about the principles of design.

Now that we’ve reviewed it, let’s try to imagine how those rules will translate to the medium of photography. The creation of a photograph is often approached in one of two ways: observation or creation. Photographers have an eye for strong composition – how the principles are used to organize the elements. Either they use their camera to frame what they have observed to already exist or they create a vision and record it. Either way, the principles are used to guide the organization in the viewfinder. Using your list of the principles of design, try to identify which was used to organize each of the following photographic compositions.

Give the photos below a medal, Gold, Silver, or Bronze, based on how successfully they use the specified element and principle."

Line and Balance
Space and Emphasis
Color and Proportion

IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS