Hi everyone, this is Tracey Clark, and I am both honored and excited to be here at Big Picture Classes promoting my first 4Experts class.

I am not a newbie teacher here; however, I have a number of e-classes under my belt. Some of you may have taken one or more of my picture series, Picture Spring, Picture Summer, Picture Fall, Picture Winter, which have been my true heart's delight and introduced me to the fun and creative potential of online instruction. I love the classroom setting here and the community that gathers for these classes so inspires me. It's thrilling for me to have the opportunity to discuss and share my greatest creative passion, photography.

For those of you who know me, I'm no stranger at speaking on the topic. As the founder and regular contributor to Shutter Sisters, sharing images and words with other women equally as passionate about taking pictures is something I do on a regular basis and I love it. What makes this class unique is that I'm going to go beyond offering creative prompts and sharing stories. In the Art of Composition class, I will be tackling one of the most sought after topics in photography, quite simply, how to improve your photographs. In an extensive 12-week course, I will be offering all the things that I have so often been asked to teach. I've gotten so many request from both the community here and at Shutter Sisters to answer questions like, "What makes certain images so appealing?", "How can I improve my photography?", "Can you tell me what changes I should make?", "What would you do to make this shot better?" I have heard these time and time again and it is my desire to answer those questions and offer you ways to improve your photographic work, to capture what you see in not only a way that makes you happy, but expresses who you are. In any art form, there is nothing better than loving your end result. My approach has always been to encourage photographers to experiment, play, feel, shoot from the heart, but I do know that from all my years in art school, as well as 20 years of shooting for both my career and in my everyday life, that there are basic compositional elements that can make all the difference in framing each image you capture creatively and effectively. In this class, I will be offering lessons that will cover these points so that you can use the basic tried and true rules of composition to your greatest advantage no matter what your subject matter might be.

The definition of composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art. In this class, the work of art we're discussing is your photography, but keep in mind that many of these elements are universal for other mediums as well. For those of you that scrapbook, using the principles of art can inadvertently help improve your page designs. Alas, since I know photography best, we will be sticking to that as our main topic.

In speaking of the main topic of this class, I really want to stress that although I will touch on some of the technical aspects of using your camera, I will only do so when it pertains to improving the compositional aspect of your work. One example that comes to mind might be depth of field for instance. We will cover that and I will help you learn how to do that more effectively with your camera, but I really want to be clear that the content of this class is not on how to use your camera, but more how to frame or arrange the elements of your imagery in your photographs.

So, what will I be sharing? Well, there is so much to talk about we will definitely need all 12 weeks. Elements like line, shape, color, balance, orientation, focus and some other principles of art that will help you better capture compelling images. What's also exciting for me is presenting this curriculum in a multilayered presentation. Although I do consider myself a writer, and I love the written word, I sometimes feel it can fall short, at least for me, when it comes to thorough detailed instruction. With that said, I will be offering audio and video along with my written lessons; I'm so excited about that part. It will help better communicate what I want to share with you. These other ways of delivering content have been discussed in some of the forums of my classes here so I want you to know, you know who you are, that I have been listening and I am super excited to bring these dimensions to this class. Lastly, there will be some time carved out for personal attention, as in one-on-one, my opinions and your work, my guidance and you (in the premium version). It's another part of this instruction that will be unique to my previous classes and beneficial for students in this class in particular. With each lesson there will be assignments given to practice what we've covered, actually doing the lesson is the best way to learn, plus I know that you all like to shoot, me too, believe me. You really can't beat the hands-on time with your camera, but I do want you to know that you will be getting some input from me on your work specifically throughout the class, and I hope that this will help you improve your work even more (in the premium version).

I am absolutely thrilled with the chance to teach all of you these creative ways to improve your work. As you probably know about me, I believe that like life, photography is all in how you look at it. My intention is to help give you the compositional tools to not only see it differently, but to be able to translate that effectively with every photograph you capture. I look forward to seeing you in class, and in the meantime just keep clicking.