Creating good compositions involves more than always using the rule of thirds. It’s a way of thinking that allows you to build photographs where you control the viewer’s experience of the image. Composition is about understanding how people look at an image and how you can use those things to your advantage. In this chapter, I explain what those things are and how they can dramatically improve your photographs.
Being aware of what draws the human eye can allow you to make photographs of the most common and mundane objects, including a table and chair. Knowing that the eye is drawn to the brightest and most color-saturated elements in the frame allowed me to build a composition where the shape of the furniture and the shadow became the heart of the image, elevating it from more than just a snapshot.
Awareness of what’s happening with the background helped to create this composition where the converging lines of the crosswalks are used to guide the viewer’s eye to the woman as she crossed the street. Repeating lines exist throughout the frame and help to provide the photograph its graphic nature. Even the angle of the woman’s left arm helps to contribute to this graphic sensibility.
There are five elements that will draw a viewer’s attention in any image. Either individually or in combination with each other, these elements are often the very first things people look at within a photograph or any other kind of image.
Viewers’ eyes are drawn to the brightest element in the frame. This is something that the great painters used to their advantage on their canvases, and it’s something that we as photographers can take advantage of with any photograph. So, it’s often best to ensure that the subject or a part of the subject is the brightest element in the scene, such as with this image of a girl playing with a balloon (Figure 8.1). Otherwise, if something in the background or a secondary element is brighter, it can compete with the subject for the viewer’s attention.
Though you’re always concerned with the overall sharpness of image, the point of focus should be the sharpest element in the frame, as with this portrait of a well-dressed young man (Figure 8.2). If the subject is sharp and the background is out of focus, the viewer’s eyes are immediately drawn to the element that’s in focus. So, if the subject is slightly out of focus or unintentionally blurred, it can hamper the viewer’s experience of the image.
Areas where light meets dark can immediately draw the viewer’s attention. Whether it’s a silhouette or a contrast of shape or color, contrast can be a great device to draw the viewer’s attention to a specific area in the frame. Contrast doesn’t just have to be about light and dark (Figure 8.3); it also can be about color, such as the juxtaposition between the colors blue and yellow, which creates an amazing sense of resonance in a photograph.
Saturated colors, such as the color red (Figure 8.4), can be a big visual draw. Saturated colors have a vibrancy to them that can easily catch the viewer’s attention. Whether it’s the clothing the subject is wearing or a door of a home in a small fishing village, color can become a key means of grabbing the viewer’s attention.
You also can use color as a theme for your photography. I often create an image that is dominated by a single color as a background element (Figure 8.5). The background can act as a color contrast to my subject, resulting in a pleasing contrast, visual interest, and isolation.
Repeating patterns (Figure 8.6) often catch a viewer’s attention. Our brains are wired to recognize patterns or repeating shapes and textures. The rhythm and flow that these patterns provide not only can be an interesting subject, but also can be used to control how the viewer navigates the entire photograph. It can help lead the viewer from the periphery of the image to the main subject.
You also can introduce contrast through different geometric shapes that battle (in a good way) for the attention of the viewer. You can combine circles and triangles, ovals and rectangles, curves and straight lines, hard and soft, dark and light, and so many more shapes (Figure 8.7). You aren’t limited to just one contrasting element either. Combining more than one element of contrast will add even more interest. Look for these contrasting combinations whenever you’re out shooting, and then use them to shake up your compositions.
Many images fall apart when something other than the subject has one or more of the five visual draws. If you have a subject in the background that’s brighter, has more contrast, and has more color saturation than your subject, that element becomes a big distraction. It results in the viewer’s attention going back and forth between your main subject and the distraction, and it weakens the effectiveness of the image.
By creating a composition in which I’m aware of these different visual draws, I have better control over how a viewer experiences an image. In this image of the stairwell, I use my knowledge of pattern, brightness, contrast, and sharpness to help guide the viewer’s eye not only down the stairwell but throughout the entire frame (Figure 8.8).
Selective focus is a great way of emphasizing your subject. Using a wide aperture or a long telephoto lens can blur the background, as I often do for a portrait (Figure 8.9), while leaving your subject tack sharp. This allows the viewer to understand what the photographer considers the most important element in the frame. The background, even if it’s blurred, can still provide a sense of place or provide an element of contrast.
I use a small aperture to increase my depth of field when photographing a natural or urban landscape (Figure 8.10) where I want most of the frame to appear sharp. Though no one element is sharper than another, I’m using other visual draws such as pattern, brightness, color saturation, and contrast to create a successful composition.
More shots are ruined by the poor choice of a background then anything else. It’s easy for photographers to get so myopic that they’re only looking at the subject and not considering anything else that’s happening within the frame. Remember, if something in your frame doesn’t serve your subject, it doesn’t need to be there. You can shift your position or your subject to eliminate those elements from the frame, especially if they’re proving to be a distraction, as I did for this photograph of a plate of pasta at a busy restaurant (Figure 8.11). By avoiding clutter and distractions in the background, you’re better able to have your main subject hold the viewer’s attention.
Finding ways to draw your viewer’s eye toward the subject of your photo is important in a photographic composition. One way to do this is to incorporate leading lines in the image. You can use this technique to create a vanishing point on the subject itself or on some point in the horizon, such as in the photograph of the interior of a museum (Figure 8.12).
Apply the shooting techniques and tools that you’ve learned in the previous chapters to these assignments, and you’ll improve your ability to incorporate good composition into your photos. Make sure you experiment with all the different elements of composition and see how you can combine them to add interest to your images.
Take your camera for a walk around your neighborhood and look for patterns and angles. Don’t worry so much about getting great shots as much as developing an eye for details.
Look for scenes that are illuminated by direct sunlight and that are resulting in strong shadows. Create compositions that emphasize the bright areas of the scene.
Look for and photograph scenes where colors contrast, such as blue/yellow or red/green. Create images that emphasize these conflicts of colors.
Depth of field plays an important role in defining your images and establishing depth and dimension. Practice shooting wide open, using your largest aperture for the narrowest depth of field. Then find a scene that would benefit from extended depth of field, using very small apertures to give sharpness throughout the scene.
Look for scenes where you can use elements as leading lines. Then look for framing elements that you can use to isolate your subject and add both depth and dimension to your images.
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