Formalism describes the critical position that the most important aspect of a work of art is its form, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects, rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world.

There are seven basic elements of photographic art: line, shape, form, texture, colour, size, and depth.

Line

Line is a point that continues; it implies motion. Lines are either straight, curved, or a combination of the two. Lines can be solid, dashed or interrupted, implied, or psychological. They can be vertical, horizontal, or somewhere in-between.

The type and general direction of lines in your image convey meaning inside the photograph. Lines are everywhere in photographs. Lines surround us, and every photograph contains lines.

Shape

Shape photography is the two-dimensional appearance of objects as your camera captures them. When a line, or more than one line, closes or connects, a shape is formed.

The Merriam-Webster definition of “shape” that we are concerned with as photographic artists is:

-the visible makeup characteristic of a particular item or kind of item

-spatial form or contour

-a standard or universally recognized spatial form

Form

What separates form from shape? Form takes shape from the two dimensional and brings it into the three dimensional. Form has overall height, width, and depth.

Just as with shapes, there are two basic types of form geometric and organic.

Geometric forms are the familiar sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, etc. We are also, of course, familiar with organic forms they are the objects that surround us in our three-dimensional world.

Texture

In photography, texture can be felt with both the fingers (the print) and virtually (with the viewer’s eye). Texture is the next part of our Elements of a Photograph series.

The definition of texture is the visual or tactile surface characteristics and appearance of something.

Texture in real life can be smooth or rough etc.

Texture in the photograph is similar to form in that it is revealed by variations in tonality and presented in two dimensions.

In a photograph, smooth objects might have reflections or specular highlights. Rough objects might have aggressive areas of light and shadow without reflections.

Texture can be elusive in a photograph, depending on the subject, the lighting, and the forms in the image.

Colour

definition of “colour” that we, as photographic artists, are concerned with is:

‘a phenomenon of light (such as red, brown, pink, or grey) or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects

the aspect of the appearance of objects and light sources that may be described in terms of hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light.

a specific combination of hue, saturation, and lightness or brightness

 a colour other than and as contrasted with black, white, or grey‘

Light itself has no perceived colour. But, send light through a prism or a drop of water and we can see that it is comprised of a literal rainbow of colours.

Colour has three properties: hue, value, and saturation.

Hue is simply the description of the colour (e.g., blue, red, yellow, etc.).

Value is the relative brightness or darkness of a colour.

Saturation is the intensity or purity of a colour. The purest colour is a hue with no white, black, or grey added to it.

Separate the different colours of the rainbow and we can see these varied colours elicit different emotional responses.

Size

Size, the most elusive of these, is the topic of this sixth part of our Elements of a Photograph series.

The definition of size is the physical magnitude, extent, or bulk : relative or proportionate dimensions.

Size in a photograph is relative and can be an illusion.

Large, medium, or small. The camera, lens, and print can render large objects small, or small objects large.

Depth

Depth, one of the most compelling elements, is the topic of this final part in our Elements of a Photograph series. Including a distant horizon is not required to give a sense of depth to your image. Depth is provided by visual cues. Depending on the quality of the surrounding air or atmosphere, distant objects in a photograph will have less clarity and contrast than objects in the foreground. This aerial perspective is indicative of depth in a photograph. Where you place an object in a frame also offers clues toward depth. The higher an object is in the frame relative to the horizon (seen or implied), the greater is the perceived distance to that object.