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Stronger Composition: Symmetry

Think about a butterfly’s wings – they’re the same on both sides, right? That’s symmetry in nature. Now lets imagine you’re taking a picture of your favorite toy or a beautiful flower, and you want it to look extra special. Try placing things so they match on both sides of your invisible line.

If you draw an invisible line right in the middle of your picture (vertical or horizontal), everything on one side should be like a twin or a reflection of everything on the other side. It’s like creating a perfect world of doubles. Symmetry makes your photo feel calm and balanced.

The rule of symmetry in photography is a compositional guideline that involves creating balance and harmony in an image by aligning elements along a central axis. Symmetry can be found in various forms, such as reflective symmetry (mirror image) or radial symmetry (circular balance).

This rule is directly connected with human biology. Particularly, our brain has a natural affinity for symmetry, and this preference is believed to be rooted in both evolutionary and cognitive factors.

Evolutionary Advantage:
Evolutionary psychologists propose that the preference for symmetry may have evolved because symmetrical features are often associated with good health and genetic fitness. In the animal kingdom, asymmetry can be a sign of developmental issues or genetic abnormalities. Therefore, individuals with more symmetrical features may be perceived as healthier and more likely to pass on robust genes to their offspring. Over time, this preference for symmetry may have become ingrained in human psychology.

Cognitive Efficiency:
Symmetrical patterns are often simpler and more regular than asymmetrical ones. The human brain tends to process and recognize familiar, regular patterns more quickly and efficiently. Symmetry provides a sense of order and predictability, making it easier for the brain to process visual information. This cognitive efficiency may contribute to the aesthetic appeal of symmetrical designs.

Aesthetic Pleasure:
The brain also experiences a sense of pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction when encountering symmetrical patterns. This response is evident in various forms of art, architecture, and design. Symmetry can create a feeling of balance and harmony, which is pleasing to the human eye and contributes to a positive emotional response.

Neurological Processing:
Studies (1, 2) using brain imaging techniques such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) have shown that the brain responds differently to symmetrical and asymmetrical stimuli. Symmetrical patterns may activate certain areas of the brain associated with reward and positive emotions.

Cultural and Environmental Influences:
While there may be some universal aspects to the preference for symmetry, cultural and environmental factors also play a role. Different cultures may have varying preferences for symmetry based on artistic traditions, historical influences, and aesthetic norms (for example, African Textile Designs, Ancient Chinese Calligraphy and Art, Baroque Architecture in Europe, Mesoamerican Art and Murals, Armenian Carpet Patterns etc).

In the picture SKRC 2.1 you can see an example of symmetrical composition. Meanwhile the SKRC 2.2 is an example of how the composition can’t be considered a symmetry as the background, particularly the building, appears differently on the right and left sides of the central axis.

The photos published on this page are a matter of copyright.
Photo credits to: Seg Kirakossian

EDUCATION / Photography

Composition Forte: Règle des Tiers

Avez-vous entendu parler de la règle des tiers?

Imaginez que vous fassiez un dessin ou que vous preniez une photo de quelque chose ! La règle des tiers est une astuce secrète qui peut rendre votre image encore plus attrayante et agréable. Selon cette règle, au lieu de tout placer au milieu, imagine que ton dessin est divisé en neuf carrés, comme une grande tablette de chocolat. Deux lignes montent et descendent et deux lignes traversent. Ces lignes créent neuf parties égales, comme les morceaux de votre chocolat préféré !

La philosophie de cette règle est la même que celle qui consiste à préparer une délicieuse pizza en répartissant uniformément toutes les garnitures. En d’autres termes, vous devez essayer de placer les parties/objets les plus importants de votre photo là où les lignes se croisent ou le long des lignes, comme si vous cachiez un trésor dans un endroit spécial.

rule of thirds with grids — Picture SKRC 1.2.2, Rule of Thirds

Vous ne savez toujours pas de quoi il s’agit? Continuez!

La règle des tiers est une ligne directrice de composition utilisée dans les arts visuels, y compris la photographie/vidéographie, la peinture et le design.

L’origine de la règle des tiers n’est pas attribuée à des personnes ou à des auteurs spécifiques, car elle a évolué au fil du temps et constitue un principe largement accepté dans les arts visuels. Elle remonte toutefois à l’art grec ancien et au concept du nombre d’or, qui consiste à diviser une composition en proportions esthétiquement agréables (par exemple : le nombre d’or, dont nous parlerons plus tard sur mon site web).

L’expression “règle des tiers” a gagné en popularité aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, en particulier dans le domaine de la peinture. Les artistes et les théoriciens ont prêté attention aux compositions asymétriques afin de créer des œuvres d’art plus dynamiques et visuellement attrayantes. Bien que le concept n’ait pas été nommé exactement “règle des tiers” à l’époque, le principe consistait à diviser la toile en tiers.

Dans le cas de la photographie, la règle des tiers s’est répandue au 20e siècle avec l’apparition des directives de composition photographique. Les photographes et les éducateurs ont commencé à utiliser le terme et à promouvoir la règle comme un outil utile pour créer des images dynamiques.

Par exemple, dans l’image SKRC 1.2.2, le navire est positionné dans le point de croisement supérieur droit de la grille de la règle des tiers. La ligne d’horizon, qui sépare le ciel de la mer, s’aligne sur la ligne horizontale supérieure de la grille. En outre, la ligne entre le rivage et l’eau correspond à la ligne horizontale inférieure de la grille. En respectant la règle des tiers, la photo présente une composition agréable à l’œil, qui guide le regard de l’observateur sur l’image tout en mettant en valeur des éléments clés tels que le navire et la ligne d’horizon.

Voici comment vérifier si l’appareil photo de votre smartphone respecte la règle des tiers :

Paramètres de l’appareil photo :

Ouvrez l’application de l’appareil photo.
Cherchez l’icône des paramètres/options.
Naviguez jusqu’à l’option “Grille” ou “Lignes de la grille”.

Activez les lignes de la grille et l’écran de votre appareil photo sera désormais doté de la grille de la règle des tiers (il peut également y avoir d’autres options de lignes de la grille).

Il s’agit d’un outil précieux pour les photographes amateurs et expérimentés utilisant des appareils mobiles.

Les photos publiées sur cette page relèvent du droit d’auteur.
Crédits photos à : Seg Kirakossian

Non-Formal

DOCUMENTARY FILMS IN EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Documentary cinema is a type of art but it also speaks with a voice of reality which contains divers colors. And the youth work is a way to try solving problems of young people through giving them competences. Combining youth work and the documentary film is a good way to bring more attention on youth problems, to raise awareness about the rights and opportunities and to share a culture of a group or an individual that they want the world to see.

My first tries in this field were in 2008 when I, as a member of World Independent Youth Union NGO and as a film directing student, made a 3 part interactive 20 minute documentary film on people who faced a discrimination in Armenia. Later it was used to make debate series in Armenian schools with support of the European Youth Foundation and in frames of the Youth Peace Ambassadors project (2 year course) by the Council of Europe. It was my way to become a trainer.

Later it became my aim to let youth workers know about the potential power of the documentary art to be used in the emotional education.

The first large-scale try was the Erasmus+ training course in Armenia called “MovieDoc” (2017) aimed to make a space for youth workers and people with autism to work together using documentary filmmaking as a tool of communication and dialogue. It was organized by “Foreign Students of Luxembourg”, Co-hosted by Doctor Cinema and financed by Erasmus+ National agency of Luxembourg: Service National de Jeunesse. Participants were from Luxembourg, France, Greece, Portugal, Georgia, Belarus, Russia, Armenia. For the youth workers it was a possibility to gain experience in a safe environment and to use it later in their communities. For the young people with autism it was a safe learning and communication space. The overall training mood and the feedback that we got from the group after the project was motivating for our team and in 2018 the idea came back to life again in different form.

The project “DocuSpeech Against Hate Speech” was consist of a Training Course in Luxembourg and a Seminar in Armenia. It organized by Foreign Students of Luxembourg, Co-hosted by Doctor Cinema with a financial support of Erasmus+ Programme granted by Luxembourgish National Agency – Anefore. The aim of the project was to empower youth workers from Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Georgia, Russia, Armenia with the skills of documentary filmmaking and using their films in their own projects. Participants created 5 session outlines about the topics of discrimination, disability, media literacy, critical thinking and Love Speech using the videos they’ve created n frames of the project. 4 session outlines are published in the Salto-Youth website and the links are below.

https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/tool/love-speech-for-a-world-without-hate.2607/

https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/tool/workshop-on-critical-thinking.2606/

https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/tool/check-the-fake.2608/

https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/tool/not-just-words.2553/

The positive resonance among participants of the previous experiences not only made us to feel the importance of the topic but also the Norvegian Erasmus+ National Agency Aktiv Ungdom, which supported the realization of the project “DocuRights”. It was organized by Frie Filmere NGO and hosted by Doctor Cinema in Armenia. The aim was to promote usage of international documentary movies in youth work as tool of emotional education.

https://www.facebook.com/DocCinema/videos/657542984654679/?__xts__[0]=68.ARAqdKmDfppMOYD-MH1qbEvnGUkv83tZy_Fj3SW184GI7BbNbpcZ5pbtPNdbiA-IPf8l8d5-qqHPMGcE2klrYu7Ay8D11ye3sQyKBwe2uCwTFxRWtfN9IpeUp4fGoiH1esh9G3_HtYN_yGtgw9zM8nIekaftdOSWIn_ocEaFvVhPGhEeuYQnFGMTPhJ-zpBxctBevnqnebLX2bGd6ZNV9-FyLAIXyCK5tzUztpFt-bLsT4Ps9gyecB6PceHTSXY9OvQatljlmYZ4rEbZnK_zwYVpbUxsEtsFd2nfx8efXxhPdPpwy9SVxwvw4azU5fh45ErfQB9Y5bkX-wlhzz5lrFbTOuYZ6_w7cvxoFg&__tn__=-R

The practice showed that the long-term involvement of participants creates an additional motivation for learning so we plan to continue promoting the usage of documentary films in youth work as a tool for dialogue, emotional learning tool, co-working space, a way to raise a voice and an intellectual entertainment.

P.S. I am grateful to Foreign Students of Luxembourg, Amities Luxembourg Armenie, Frie Filmere for their trust and support to me as a trainer, to the National Agencies of Erasmus+ in Luxembourg (Anefore, Service National de Jeunesse) and in Norway (Aktiv Ungdom) for believing in our projects, and to my colleagues who give me lots of energy to go on.

Film Critic

Nanook of the 21st century

A review about the documentary film Makala (2017) by by Emmanuel Gras

A man is sitting near the huge tree that he just cut, and the leaf shadow is moving on his head as it strokes him. Such scenes are the core of the film Makala by Emmanuel Gras. It has more to show than to tell.

“Nanook of the North” was the first film about which, in 1922, the term documentary was used as a movie characteristic. Nowadays, when the film Makala is shot with a similar topic (the daily struggle of the “man of nature), there is a worldwide tendency to erase the border between fiction and documentary as it’s difficult to define. And really, if the story of Makala wouldn’t be too simple, it would be less likely to believe that that it’s a documentary. Everything that happens in the film is more than natural, more than well-prepared. The only scene when the camera gets into a documentary panic is when the heavily loaded bicycle falls down on the road and obviously, the protagonist can’t fix it alone.

It’s usual to say that films are good if they create a feeling of identification and empathy in the audience with the protagonists. That makes it easier to follow the story. The author of Makala – Emmanuel Gras, didn’t try to follow this principle: who would like to work hard to make coal and get paid for it almost nothing, as the protagonist does? On the other hand, there are not many obvious conflict situations. So why it’s still interesting to follow the flow of time showing nothing special? The secret is the HOW. First, it’s joyful to follow how the camera plays with objects, lights and shadows. For example, the bike is overloaded with an impressive big-size shipment. It’s riding on a sand road. Its shadow is sliding on the ground and the wheel shadow close-up can make the spectator emotionally experience the suffering of the bicycle. There are also hidden conflicts throughout all the film – a conflict between man and the rules of the world where he loses and which is metaphorically shown in the road scene when the protagonist is lost in the dust made by cars driving nearby.

Though the peaks of the storyline are on-the-road scenes, but the key point is in the end, which makes the film complete, reasonable and independent from being called a remake of Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook”. It’s about the Christian church gathering scene, especially the sentence with the following message – if you are an honest man, then the torture of daily life will not affect you, if you are not honest, then it will.

So the film is about honesty – the protagonist is no t stealing to build his dream house, not taking taxes from other workers like he is being stopped on the road. The director created so an honest character that even the tree he cuts is “stroking” his head.

The work with people shot in the film is another subject worthy of paying attention to. There are 3 main ways to make people not be constrained by the presence of the camera:

hidden camera;
task giving (like actors);
long-lasting shootings.

The director didn’t leave signs in the film to understand which one he used. For example, in the scene where another man (antagonist) asks the protagonist to pay a tax and the camera is shooting from a distance a doubt can appear – does the tax collector knows about the camera? If yes – is he acting, or why did he let them shoot? Usually, people don’t welcome the idea of being filmed while doing illegal actions. If he doesn’t know, then how the flip-on microphone and the camera (probably with a tripod or steady-cam) were not noticed by the people around. But such kind of doubts during the film don’t harm the documentary value of Makala (the word means coal in Swahili) as love and an honest look of the author are present in the movie, and they are dominant compared to the hardly noticeable issues.

At the end of all, Makala is here to prove once again that the documentary cinema didn’t change its nature within 1 century – as worse it is for protagonists in real life as better for the documentary film. It’s crucial to accept but in the 1920s, Flaherty didn’t help his protagonists anyhow to survive the heavy living conditions but only captured it. 2 years later, after the premiere of the film about himself – Nanook died because of hunger. A century later, Emmanuel Gras still captures heavy living conditions and it’s so beautiful on the screen, so poetic.

Seg Kirakossian

The review is written in frames of the film critics’ workshop by Olivier Pélisson during the Golden Apricot international film festival 2019

OTHER

Film Suggestions

There are films that I consider worthy everyone to watch as they can wider your impressions about the cinema art. Here is the list I would suggest to watch and that I’ve found full films online.

Film Critic

Identified Desires of the Audience and the Protagonist

A review of the documentary film “Amy” (2015) by Asif Kapadia

In Armenian cinema theaters documentary films are considered as not profitable. But how does Armenian society understand the term “documentary film”? It is associated with the usage of archive materials, interviews with protagonists and their relatives, arrangement of visual material in chronological logic, captions introducing the speakers, etc. Documentary filmmakers, who are usually going to make a film, are primarily thinking about these simple methods. In some cases, the authors contrive to find a solution of creative and correct storytelling form, which is evidence of their professionalism. On the other hand, sometimes documentaries can be built with grammatically correct editing, shots full of aestheticized approach, and scripts with creative bases, but still, they are passed by the film history as regular films and not making dialogue with the audience. The documentary film “Amy” (2015) by Asif Kapadia is not such kind of example. In this work, the director succeeded in making a biography film that creates a dialogue with the viewers, excites them and makes them feel empathy for the protagonist. And this is achieved using mainly the seemingly simple tools and methods mentioned in the beginning of this review. This phenomenon is described by the word “art”, around which people are thinking and debating over the centuries in different parts of the world.
In this film, which is spreading light on the life story and character of Amy Winehouse, the author collected visual footage from her childhood, teenage and youth ages shot by her family, friends and journalists. Each of these is interesting as they show whatever we can’t usually see on the TV screens, but a direct combination of them would not become a work of art. Therefore, interviews with the people appearing in the archive materials come to tell about the protagonist’s inner world, excitements, joys and problems from the distance of time. A merger of audio-visual material occurs – the image and sound, independent from each other, would have an archival, document nature, but they become an invulnerable structure together.
The simple style of new areas’ addressing shots (by drones) is in line with the general style of the film, which strives for simplicity. By their inner logic and form, these shots serve as the final solution of the dramaturgical line – the protagonist’s death, which is mystically interpreted as leaving the Earth, rising to the heavens, and seeing the environment from above.
The logic of the above-mentioned dramaturgical line is similar to the track record of a cardiogram device working in a balanced pace, which is from time to time coming out of the norm, creating a shock for the viewer.
As a witness, the audience becomes a participant in the intimate and cherished moments of her life; and at the end of the film, even knowing the reality very well, we get emotional again. Probably all the spectators know that ominous news before the screening, but for an average statistical viewer, the feelings of regret here are different than listening to the news program on TV: taking part in Amy’s life situations, feeling that she is not manipulating or hiding from the screen for us, a close-friendly connection feeling arises in the audience. It can be highly connected with the author’s courage when he brings the audience to the cinema hall and, from the very beginning, shows technically bad quality shots from family archives. Before our eyes, the teenage girl is growing, evolving, and becoming a popular and beloved artist, so even Tony Bennett kindly endures her whims. It provokes a feeling that she is going to abrasion side. During the film, the subconscious anxiety costrel and the feeling of inability to change anything are increasing at equal rates reaching the top marks on the emotional scale. The audience is aware of that abrasion, but the protagonist is not aware of it. But at the end of the film, the desires of both sides are identified – both of them do not want such an ending. In this tragic story, the British self-ironic humor can be noticed, which means that the film authors are free of pompous behavior and complexes, like the characters who appear in the movie. “There’s no point in saying anything but the truth”,- Amy Winehouse said.
The Yerevan screenings of “Amy” with full cinema halls allow drawing a number of conclusions about the Armenian audience demand as well as the trends in world cinema. Of course, the large interest in the film is directly connected with the scandalous and popular personality of the protagonist. However, to keep the audience in the hall for 125 minutes in a way not to get boring is only possible in case of understanding, solidarity and love between the director and the main hero (in this case, with the footage presenting her). The evidence of the benevolent attitude of the singer is the success of the movie and its emotional power. Although from another world, where she now lives for the lovers of her songs, Amy agreed to enter into a new game, which her friends had begun in their teenage years by recording each other. Art is the beautiful image of an object and in this film, it’s obvious the love of the author to the singer, also the regret and grief towards her tragic fate.
Claims that in the modern changing world, where everything happens very quickly, the documentary film should be as short as possible not to lose the audience halfway are disproved with this film. This also proves that three Yerevan screenings in a hall of 350 seats were free of charge and the audience wouldn’t mind paying money if they decided to leave the hall. This case also rejected the impossibility of bringing the audience (especially Armenian) to the cinema with documentary film. What the Armenian film viewer wants from documentarians is honesty. They expect a film that is not detached from reality and not overloaded with aesthetics. In such kinds of films, according to the authors’ approach, even the dirty wall, messy room, or scene satisfying the biological requirements is perceived as an artistic element.
Analyzing the documentary film “Amy” with Armenian screenings in the background, we can see a bilateral process. On the one hand, the film gathers the audience thanks to the original story, unique topic and famous protagonist, and keeps them in the screening hall for more than two hours thanks to the exciting, competent and sincere work that is done. On the other hand, it brings to the cinema the specific audience, which made drawn up an opinion on a documentary film by the TV movies made just as report and interview. It also shows the real nature of documentary cinema and excites people. This process makes more people to be curious about documentary cinema. If national or international films increase such examples, documentary cinema can form its audience and arouse theatrical demand in Armenia.

Seg Kirakossian

The review won the main award during the Review competition of the British Film Festival (Yerevan, 2016)

Author: admin