Get thee to an art museum! With all of this talk the past week about learning from photography I wanted to share an even more effective piece of advice when it comes to the increasing sill with regards to good design. Luckily it’s a simple one. Get thee to an art museum! I’m serious. Find some local art museums and actually put a visit on the calendar, bonus points if you can get your boss to approve an outing on company time, and another set of bonus points if you can move exceptionally slow through the museum by yourself. Our local museum currently has an exhibit on illustrator N.C. Wyeth. With Treasure Island being a favorite in our house I knew I needed to take my boys. And I’m going to be making a return trip solo soon. Because while Wyeth is quoted as saying “Painting [or fine art] and illustration cannot be mixed—one cannot merge from one into the other.” I completely disagree. Exploring the world of fine art can indeed help with improving our design efforts.

ISO Explained There was a bit of confusing and I received a few questions yesterday regarding ISO and what exactly it is and how it works. In this video, I delve a little deeper. ISO is easiest to visualize when we consider film photography. ISO literally refers to the size of the silver halide crystals that are on the plastic film. The smaller the crystals the smaller the ISO number and the larger the crystals the larger the ISO. So what effect does the size of the crystals have on the images? The larger crystals are more light-sensitive so they can absorb more light and need less light to produce a quality image, the smaller crystals need more light to produce the same image. The trade-off comes in the form of graininess in the image. The original “pixilation” if you will. Now grainy photos can be quite cool, especially if you’re aiming for spooky fall photos but not so cool when you’re trying to get technical details so the ISO choices will largely depend on what you’re trying to achieve in your photography. Generally speaking though the lower the ISO the better with regards to detail. In digital photography, we don’t swap out our light sensor for one that is more or less sensitive to light so what happens is the computer in the camera will computationally boost the values of the light hitting the sensor in low light situations or if the ISO is manually increased. The effect as anyone who’s taken a low light photo with a smartphone will notice is a grainy photo. Since the effect is almost exactly the same as in the film the name and paradigm work well in both instances.

The Exposure Triangle Photography and video are important components of instructional design. As we look at some of the things that photography can help us with regarding good visual design overall as well as good instructional design it would be a mistake not to share one of the more important photography concepts. This is the exposure triangle. We’ve all seen images that were overexposed and a bit too bright and images that were a bit underexposed or a bit dark. So today I wanted to discuss the three elements that make up the exposure triangle in photography. The first element is the shutter speed. This is literally the speed at which the shutter moves out of the way and lets light pass through to the film or these days to the light sensor. The slower the shutter speed the more light but also the more likely that images seem blurry due to movement. The second element is the aperture. The camera’s aperture works just like the pupil in our eyes, it opens and closes to let in more or less light. We discussed this a few days ago when we discussed the depth of field, the trade-off with light and the aperture has to do with the depth of field your image sill have. The third element is ISO. ISO can be a bit confusing but it refers to the light sensitivity of your film or the artificial light enhancement done in the computer part of your digital camera.

Another bit of photography composition advice that is useful for instructional design is the idea to simplify whenever possible. Remove as much as possible. This allows for focus on the subject, removes unnecessary elements to reduce cognitive load, and gives you a cleaner overall design.

Another important aspect of photography and composition has to do with backgrounds. Essentially the backgrounds in our visual work should not distract our learners. We should be focused on our subject and the backgrounds our images should be used to give context if necessary but we need to be aware of them and not forget to check for distracting or inappropriate items in the background of the media we make. This is also another good analogy for the instructional content. We should include useful background information that can give context but it should not distract our learners.

Today I wanted to discuss an important photography and videography concept. Depth of field. I’ve been asked quite often about how to get the “blurry background” when photographing or recording video of a subject. In this video, I discuss the concept of depth of field. In essence, the depth of field is how “deep” the field of focus will be in an image. This is controlled primarily through adjusting the aperture. The larger the aperture (ironically the smaller the f-stop number) the more narrow the depth of field and the smaller the aperture (again larger f-stop number) the wider the depth of field will be.

As we explore the concepts and composition advice from photography that can help us in instructional design one less known one is the advice to not “cut off limbs” of photography subjects. The idea is to give context and not confuse the perspective of the viewer. An important visual concept to remember as we place images in our instructional materials this also works as an important metaphor as well. We should ensure that we give our content context as well so that our learners know where all of this sits.

As we explore some of the important things we can pull from photography to enhance our instructional design another tip from photography that can help with instructional design is the idea to “fill the frame” with your subject. This, of course, works visually as you should focus on your subject to direct attention and remove distraction but it also makes a good metaphor with regards to filling our content with our subject for much the same reason.

As we continue to explore the ways we can gain insight from photography and video for use in instructional design I wanted to share the 180-degree rule. The easiest way I have been able to visualize this rule is to imagine a traditional stage for live theater. The actors can come right up to the edge and the audience can also go right up to the edge. But except in rare situations, the audience shouldn’t climb onto the stage and the actors shouldn’t come down off the stage. When filming or doing photography or illustrations for elearning it is important that we not confuse the audience with regards to perspective. If our two actors or characters are facing each other one on the right and the other on the left they should stay on their respective sides and we should be careful when changing our perspective that we don’t confuse the viewer by thinking our actors have traded positions.

I was at a photography exhibit the other day and was reminded about how many of the concepts of good photography directly impact instructional design. Not only because photography is used in instructional design but because of the very often very visual nature of our work. While it is possible to have 100% life instruction with no physical materials or 100% audio materials more often than not we are going to have a visual element. So I wanted to explore a bit of what we can take from photography either directly or indirectly. Today the idea I wanted to share is the “Rule of Thirds” many cameras and most phones have the option to overly a “grid” over the screen to help in composing our photography. The one I find most valuable is the two vertical and two horizontal lines that break the image into six boxes. This helps us frame using the rule of thirds which states that if we place our main elements on those lines with an emphasis on the for cross points we will end up with a more appealing image and overall better composition. My recommendation today is turn on that grid if you don’t already and try to get in the habit of using it.