8. Creative Compositions

Improving Your Pictures with Sound Compositional Elements

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.

Poring Over the Picture

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.

The Five Visual Draws

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.

Brightness

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.

Figure 8.1 The shaft of light illuminating the girl with the balloon and the contrast that resulted help lead the viewer’s eye. The saturated color of her clothing and the balloons also help to hold the viewer’s attention.

Sharpness

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.

Figure 8.2 A shallow depth of field and precise focus on this young man helped to keep the viewer focused on his dapper appearance and expression.

Contrast

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.

Figure 8.3 The direct sunlight hitting this place setting created a high-contrast image, where the shape of the fork, plate, and napkin became strong graphic elements. The presence of the shadow at the top of the frame helped to emphasize the whiteness of the overall image.

Color Saturation

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.

Figure 8.4 The hard light provided by direct sunlight emphasized the colors of this parking lot kiosk and created shadows that provided a sense of depth and shape to the structure.

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.

Figure 8.5 The saturated color of the barbed wire and the out-of-focus green foliage behind it created a contrast of color and sharpness that helped control how the viewer looks at the photograph.

Pattern

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.

Figure 8.6 The color of the wall that lay behind this chain-link fence blended the visual draws of a strong saturated color, contrast, sharpness, and repeating pattern.

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.

Figure 8.7 Breaking a pattern helps to emphasize the pattern itself, as with this image of an iron fence outside an old church.

Working Together

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).

Figure 8.8 The visual draws of brightness, sharpness, contrast, color saturation, and pattern were all at play in this image of a hotel stairwell. The tight composition created a natural visual flow for the viewer to navigate.

Depth of Field

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.

Figure 8.9 The use of a wide aperture helped to throw the busy street out of focus and allowed me to focus on the face of this young woman.

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.

Figure 8.10 The depth of field provided by a wide-angle lens and a moderate aperture helped to emphasize the repeating pattern of the apartments, and the lines guide the viewer’s eye to the end of the street.

Backgrounds

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.

Figure 8.11 Using a wide aperture to create a narrow depth of field to emphasize the ingredients of this delicious meal minimized the clutter and the activity of a busy restaurant.

Leading Lines

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).

Figure 8.12 The leading lines and the repeating patterns that existed in the museum helped me to build a composition that flows naturally to the building’s entrance.

Chapter 8 Assignments

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.

Learn to See Lines and Patterns

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 Brightness and Contrast

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.

Close in on a Clash of Colors

Look for and photograph scenes where colors contrast, such as blue/yellow or red/green. Create images that emphasize these conflicts of colors.

Use the Aperture to Focus the Viewer’s Attention

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.

Lead Them into the Frame

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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