Chapter 12
Exploring Other Compositional Ideas
In This Chapter
Achieving balance in your compositions
Driving home your message through repetition
Avoiding traditional compositions with creative techniques
Every photograph is unique and represents a special moment in time. The composition of a photo is part of what makes it unique. However, you won’t apply all the compositional rules all the time (in fact, doing so isn’t possible), and what works for one scenario may not work for another.
Think of compositional rules and techniques as tools, and be sure you know which tool is right for each job. Your intended message of a particular scene determines which techniques work best. Sometimes you photograph a scene that presents its elements in a nice, clear way, and you don’t have to think very hard about how to compose the frame. Other times you have to examine a scene more deeply to reveal what’s special about it. If at first glance nothing jumps out at you as the subject or as having much meaning, use the techniques discussed in this chapter to draw something out of it.
Creating Harmony with Balance and a Sense of Scale
Television keeps a viewer’s attention by providing a continuously changing image. You’re always seeing something new (apart from the fact that much of the content on television is reruns), so you likely spend more time looking at a single screen than you do a single photograph. Similarly, most people flip through magazines quickly, giving the average photo just a few seconds of their time. A photograph is only one image, so people feel they can get the message right away and move on.
Your job as a photographer is to catch the attention of viewers before they have a chance to flip the page or move on to another image. Creating compositions in which the elements are balanced throughout the frame and the message is informative is a great way of doing so. Viewers can’t help but notice harmony within the frame of an image. When the elements in a photograph are balanced, they show viewers how to see the image and hold their eyes within the frame. Plus, having a sense of scale provides viewers with information that’s necessary to understanding the size and distance relationships of elements within the frame.
In this section, I discuss the compositional weight of elements and how you can affect that weight. I also describe how to include a sense of scale in your compositions and the benefits of doing so.
Keeping the elements balanced and properly weighted
When arranging the furniture in a room, would you ever choose to place everything on just one side? Sure, you may do it to create a dance floor for a party, but for everyday living, you probably arrange the furniture in a way that gives it balance.
Balance isn’t absolutely necessary, but it’s natural and can work wonders for your photographic composition. An unbalanced composition in a photograph may give your viewers an uneasy feeling when they look at it — a good thing only when you do it intentionally. Generally, you want people to enjoy looking at your images, and you have many options for achieving this mission through balance. Each element has a certain visual impact in your frame known as its weight. How you distribute the elements based on their varying weights determines the balance of your composition.
In photographic composition, weight refers to the amount of impact an element has in comparison to the other elements in the scene. A larger element has more weight than a smaller element; an area with more contrast has more weight than an area with less contrast; and a more colorful element has more weight than a duller element.
Making compositional elements mimic one another with symmetry
When you use symmetry in a composition, you aim for an even distribution of weight, which may mean size, shape, tone, color, and so on. With symmetry, for every element you place on one side of the frame, place something of similar weight directly across on the opposite side.
By creating balance with symmetry, you give viewers a subconscious desire to move their eyes back and forth through the frame. A composition divided up into equally weighted sections gives viewers more to look at than a composition that only has one point of interest.
You don’t have to achieve perfect symmetry to have balance. Your goal is simply to create a composition in which your points of interest aren’t all crammed into one area, but are spread evenly throughout the frame.
In Figure 12-1, I positioned the vanishing point (the area at which the pier disappears into the distance) of the pier in the center and a large piling on the right side of the frame. The piling carries a lot of weight, so I balanced it out in order to make the left side of the frame equal in visual impact. Placing my subject opposite the piling helped to achieve a type of symmetrical balance in this composition.
Figure 12-1: Balance achieved through symmetry.
Even though it’s an option, symmetry isn’t often used in photographic composition because it can be considered stiff or boring. Instead, usually you compose a scene asymmetrically. This technique, which I describe in the next section, is known as informal balance. Creating balance with asymmetrical elements is slightly more complex.
Informal balance: Producing natural balance without symmetrical elements
To create informal balance, you distribute the weight of a scene’s elements without using symmetry. The elements don’t mimic each other’s shapes, sizes, colors, or placement in the frame. However, they’re still placed strategically to keep your viewers’ eyes moving from one element to another, covering the entire area of the composition.
Figure 12-2 provides an example of informal balance. Notice how the image has no symmetrical qualities. The green car is close to the camera and has elements of contrast and color, which help to make it stand out as the subject. The neon lights of the buildings draw your attention to the upper-left side of the frame and then lead your eyes into the background where a car’s headlights grab your attention. Although the green car is the main focus of this scene, the composition provides interest throughout the scene.
Creating a composition in which the subject has the most weight is okay, but if you want to give your viewers something to move on to, share some of the weight with other elements in the scene. Have the weight gradually decrease in the order that you would like your viewers to move through the frame. You could do so by having slightly less contrast from one element to the next or by having the size of each element gradually get smaller.
Figure 12-2: Informal balance achieved with contrast and color.
Controlling balance with color
Color works great for controlling the balance in a composition. Each color has an opposite (refer to the color wheel provided in Chapter 6) and a certain weight, so be sure to position the elements of your scene with color in mind. Here are some specific suggestions:
Spread the color throughout the scene instead of having all the strong elements of color stuffed together in one area.
Use an element of color to balance out an element of size, shape, or tone.
Balance color with the absence of color. If one small red dot appears in an otherwise neutral frame, the color stands out (has weight). It also will be balanced by the vast amount of the frame that’s lacking color.
Refer to Figure 12-2, and note that the blue sky and orange street on the right side of the frame contrast with each other as complimentary colors. Check out Chapter 6 for more information regarding color in your composition.
Trying out negative space
An area in your composition that contains no points of interest — no clearly represented element but space itself — is referred to as negative space. You can use negative space to balance your composition; in fact, it’s fun to experiment with. The more negative space you provide, the more the message becomes about the negative space itself. The less you provide, the more the message becomes about the subject.
A strong subject positioned in the bottom left corner of a frame surrounded by nothing but blank space would appear to be unbalanced. However, if you find the right amount of negative space with which to surround that subject, you can achieve compositional balance.
Each situation is different and requires you to judge how much negative space is necessary in a particular scene. You can determine how much negative space you need to balance out your subject by looking at how heavily weighted your subject is and where it’s positioned in your frame.
Figure 12-3 shows how the appropriate amount of negative space can provide balance in a photograph. This example shows how much negative space was required in this scenario to make the image equally about the subject and the negative space.
Including a sense of scale
Your literal understanding of certain elements affects the way you perceive balance and weight. When a person looks small in a scene, you can assume he was far away from the camera at the time of the exposure. If one person is small and another is much larger, you know that distance lies between the two of them in relation to the camera.
Figure 12-3: Too much or too little negative space could ruin the balance in a photograph, but the right amount gets the job done.
You can make these assumptions because you’re familiar with the size of people and can use that familiarity to assume things about an image. Objects, on the other hand, are trickier. If I stick a miniature umbrella (like the ones used to garnish drinks) in the sand and photograph the scene from above, you may assume that it was a beach shot taken from high in the air, perhaps in a helicopter. But, if I placed an empty glass with half-melted ice cubes next to the umbrella, you would know that it was a miniature from the cocktail someone just finished.
When it comes to representing an element’s size, some situations require further explanation to get the message across. The viewer needs some element in the scene that has a known value of size (like a person) in order to reveal the size of the other elements. Including that element in your scene gives the composition a sense of scale.
Providing a sense of scale usually is relevant when size matters to your message. A sense of scale is a great way to capture a viewer’s attention through the lure of amazement. It’s also a great way to tell a story about your subject or the environment in your scene.
For example, a small figure amidst a busy city with towering buildings and traffic jams could send a message about being unremarkable or about being a necessary part of the system, depending on the compositional techniques used to create the message. A small climber on a huge rock face surrounded by wilderness is brave and adventuresome. One small figure at the far end of an expansive room highlights the size of the room and could send a message of being alone or of lacking an identity.
The redwoods in Northern California are one of my favorite things to explore and photograph. These trees are amazing and massive. Relating that size to a viewer is difficult unless you include an element that can be compared to the trees. In the left-hand image of Figure 12-4, I photographed the trees among themselves, so they appear to be fairly normal in size. In the image on the right side, however, I included a person in the scene to show just how massive the trees actually are.
Figure 12-4: Redwood trees photographed with and without a sense of scale.
Using Rhythm and Repetition of Elements
Elements that are identical or similar in shape, texture, line, color, tone, or size provide an excellent opportunity to create interesting and compelling compositions through rhythm and repetition. The rhythm in a composition is a combination of balance and repetition (see the earlier section “Creating Harmony with Balance and a Sense of Scale” for more on balance). Repetition is the technique of using elements that are the same as or similar to one another. As elements repeat, or mimic one another, they tend to create patterns, which are easily recognized by viewers. The way you use repetition in your composition determines the composition’s rhythm.
When you put a mirror image, or two elements of similar look and size, in a composition, the viewer’s eyes jump back and forth to compare the two and to look for similarities and differences. When you put elements of similar look but varying sizes in a composition, the viewer’s eyes follow one to the other based on their individual weight in the composition.
In Figure 12-5, each line and shape gradually decreases in weight as you move toward the center of the frame, creating a pattern. This photo doesn’t actually contain a mirror image, but the left and right sides of the frame are so similar that you’re compelled to investigate it for yourself. Because of the repetition, the image has a straightforward rhythm. The symmetry causes you to bounce back and forth while the leading lines and repeating shapes cause you to be drawn into the image toward the vanishing point where a man is walking through the massive tunnel. (I discuss vanishing point in the earlier section “Making compositional elements mimic one another with symmetry.”) Even with such a small and unclear subject, this composition does everything in its power to draw you toward that subject and to keep your eyes from wandering off the edge of the frame.
Figure 12-5: A composition showing symmetry and the vanishing pattern, which are two styles of repetition.
Patterns don’t have to be as blatantly symmetrical as the example shown in Figure 12-5. Any similarity or relationship in shape, texture, line, color, or size can create repetition in a composition.
For example, in Figure 12-6, sea gulls fly through the air in no particular order. However, they each take on a somewhat similar shape created by three lines meeting at a center point. The gradual differences in size represent distance, and the scattered order of the flock represents a pattern of randomness or free will. Certain sections of the pattern create shapes similar to that of an individual seagull. The holes in the sand create another pattern in this composition. They’re scattered randomly and create a sort of reflection (or symmetry) to the birds in the sky. The rhythm in this photo represents freedom and space, and it generally flows in a way that leads your eyes through the frame from left to right. The direction of this composition is much less blatant than that of Figure 12-5.
Figure 12-6: Suggested symmetry through similar patterns.
Pulling harmony out of chaos
Soldiers marching to a cadence are in rhythm with each other, so if you photograph an advancing platoon you capture a moment when 40 or so men and women are in sync and each is mimicking the others. This repetition creates an obvious pattern.
People in a busy public area, however, are unlikely to be in perfect sync with one another. Each has an individual destination and purpose. Some people may be in cars and others are on bicycles. Still others are walking, jogging, standing, sitting, eating, reading, and so on. In this type of scene, where everything seems to be on its own program, you may consider the situation to be in chaos. But, if you pay closer attention, I guarantee that you can find repetition and patterns.
For example, if two (or even better, three) men are wearing hats of similar styles, you have repetition. A child holding a red balloon could produce repetition with a red traffic light and a woman wearing the same shade of red on her lips. Maybe the texture of a dog’s fur is similar to the texture of a person’s coat.
After you notice a pattern or repetition, the key to getting the shot is finding the right perspective to reveal the similarities in the composition. Your perspective is a combination of your relationship to the elements and their relationships to each other. I discuss perspective in detail in Chapter 8.
Shooting simple compositions
A simple design provides a clean composition with a minimal number of graphic elements. When it’s successful, a simple composition provides a strong message and a complex theme using only the elements that are absolutely necessary for that specific message. With this type of composition, everything in the frame is necessary.
In a simple design, repeating elements can provide a great amount of aesthetic value. Their rhythm can reveal itself to viewers with a minimal amount of distractions, and this means you can include subtle patterns that are more likely to be noticed.
The composition in Figure 12-7 is clean and contains a minimal number of compositional elements. The obvious message is that this is a pretty photograph of the moon reflecting on the ocean at nighttime. With further examination of this image, however, you begin to notice that there’s much more to the story.
Figure 12-7 looks like a simple photo at first, but many relationships take place in the composition, and some are subtler than others. The moon is mimicked in a mutated way by its elongated and warped reflection in the water. The seashells in the foreground mimic the stars in the sky — they have wet surfaces, which reflect tiny highlights similar to the stars. The fall of night helps to minimize details that are revealed, making the details that are revealed more powerful. In addition to being a pretty photo of the moon reflecting over the ocean, this image could be viewed as a story about light and patterns in nature. Additional elements in this photo would take away from the current message and decrease the simplicity of the composition.
Figure 12-7: Minimizing the amount of elements helps to emphasize the ones that are included.
Reinforcing your subject or intended message with repeating elements
Sometimes you face situations where a strong competing element creates confusion about your subject or intended message. In this case, you need to find ways to direct attention back to your subject.
Including a repeating element that mimics or mirrors your subject is a great way to assure a viewer as to exactly what the photo’s subject is. When shooting Figure 12-8, for example, I was excited to have the moon positioned above the pool house. However, I also was aware that the moon would compete directly with the woman (the subject) standing in the doorway. Luckily, I could include the woman’s reflection in the pool as a repeating element, which causes you to examine her figure more than if no reflection were present. This composition helps to establish the woman as the subject and the moon as a supporting element rather than the other way around. This is partially due to rhythm, because the woman’s presence is seen twice and the moon only once. As a result, you’ll notice her more often when scanning the image.
Conversely, you can isolate your subject by making it the only element that isn’t repeated in a pattern. When the subject breaks the pattern, it stands out from the elements that are alike. An office building with many windows that all look the same is more interesting when just one of the lights is not on. That window stands out as the subject by breaking the repetition. Or imagine a line of men wearing white T-shirts; if one man wears a pink T-shirt, he becomes the subject. (And the message becomes “This guy doesn’t know how to separate laundry.”)
Figure 12-8: A repeating element helps draw attention to that which it repeats.
Creative Ways to Break the Rules or Cheat the System
Creating successful compositions by following the rules and going with tried-and-true practices is rewarding and guarantees that your photos will at least be nice to look at. However, you’ll likely become bored with creating appropriate compositions — doing so may make you feel unoriginal. In these situations, let go of the rules and experiment with some new ideas. In this section, I cover some of the techniques and practices that I’ve tried when searching for something different.
You don’t have to break every compositional rule in one photo. And you should have a purpose for breaking the rules you choose to break. There’s a thin line between creating a new message and destroying an existing one. Knowing the difference is vital to breaking the rules successfully.
Experimenting with the tilt-shift lens
One of my absolute favorite tools in my camera bag is the tilt-shift lens, which enables me to
Create multiple points of focus when using a shallow depth of field
Maintain sharpness throughout vast areas both in the foreground and background
Raise, lower, and shift my composition without moving the camera at all
Stitch together multiple images to form seamless panoramic compositions
A tilt-shift lens’s design makes these things possible. The lens is divided into two parts that work together to direct light toward the digital sensor. The front part of the lens can tilt, swing, shift, rise, and fall in relation to the back part and the camera’s digital sensor.
Understanding how the tilt-shift lens works is the first step toward creating unique compositions with it. The lens is equipped with an axis that allows the front element to tilt up and down or swing from side to side while the back element remains in its original position. Where the lens meets the camera body, a slide allows the lens to move up, down, and side to side.
Each of the different movements the front elements of the lens can make affects how the composition is changed. I explain each movement’s effects in the following sections.
Tilt
Tilt represents the lens’s ability to rotate up and down on a horizontal axis. This movement causes your plane of focus to rotate in the same manner. (For more information on plane of focus, head to Chapter 7.) With a normal lens, your plane of focus is parallel to your digital sensor. So, if your camera is level to the ground, your plane of focus is perpendicular to the ground and goes from side to side in your frame from the ground to the sky.
On a tilt-shift lens, when you tilt the front part of your lens toward the ground, your camera remains level but your focal plane rotates in the same way as the lens. So, instead of having a focal plane that’s standing straight up, you have one that’s angled from the foreground toward the background. The more you tilt the lens, the more horizontal the plane of focus will become.
This type of plane of focus helps to achieve the illusion of having a great depth of field and is great for shooting wide landscapes with interesting details in the foreground and in the background. (Check out Chapter 7 for more on depth of field.)
Swing
Swing is much like tilt (discussed in the preceding section) except that the front element of the tilt-shift lens rotates from side to side rather than up and down. Your plane of focus behaves in the same way as the direction of the lens movement. When you swing the lens to the right, your plane of focus stays vertical and rotates clockwise through the scene. Instead of having a plane of focus that goes from side to side in your frame, you now have one that goes through at an angle.
With this in mind, you can achieve focus on both a subject that’s close to the camera and one that’s farther from the camera as long as they’re both positioned on the angle of the plane of focus. Having a shallow depth of field in this scenario lets you put the two elements in focus while everything else in the frame goes blurry. This technique is the same as selective focus (see Chapter 7), but you have two sharp points of focus at different distances from the camera. In reality your eyes can’t focus on two things at two different distances, so this type of composition is unnatural and really gets a viewer’s attention. Figure 12-9 shows an image with two points of sharp focus achieved by using this technique.
Figure 12-9: Two sharp points of focus created by the swing function on a tilt-shift lens.
Shift
Shift is the technique in which you slide the lens from side to side at the point where the tilt-shift lens meets the camera body. This shift causes the lens to capture light from a different perspective than the one you see from your point of view. If you shift it to the right, your composition shifts to the right (and vice versa). I refer to this technique as false perspective.
You can use false perspective in a number of ways, including the following:
To move the subject from the center of the frame without changing its shape: Some subjects require you to photograph them from straight on, in which case the camera is level, parallel, and lined up exactly with the center of the subject. You photograph something in this way to show the true shape of the subject without making one side appear larger than the other. In this scenario your subject rests in the exact center of your frame. Shifting your lens to the left or the right moves the subject out of the center of the frame without affecting its shape.
To create panoramic compositions: This is the application of shift that I use most often. To create these compositions, set your camera on a tripod directed at the center of the scene and then shift your lens all the way to the left. Expose an image and then shift the camera back to the center to take another exposure. Then shift the lens all the way to the right and take a third exposure. Finally, you can use your photo-editing software to line up the three images (as layers in one single file) at the points where they overlap, resulting in a panoramic composition of the scene. See the manual for your photo-editing software to find out how to auto-align your layers.
Rise and fall
Rise and fall is similar to shift (which is discussed in the preceding section), but it instead refers to the tilt-shift lens sliding up and down at the point where it meets the camera body. Rise and fall is most commonly associated with architectural and interior photography. Sliding the lens up or down can help you achieve the composition you desire without distorting the shape of your subject.
In Figure 12-10, I show two examples of a similar composition of a building. The camera’s physical position was the same in each, but in the photo on the left I had to angle the camera upward to get the whole building in my frame. Doing so caused the building to be bigger at the bottom (where it’s closest to my digital sensor) and to get thinner toward the top (where it’s angled farthest from the digital sensor). In the photo on the right, I raised the lens upward instead of angling the whole camera. By doing so, my digital sensor remained parallel to the building and allowed me to avoid distorting its shape.
Figure 12-10: Raising a tilt-shift lens helps achieve the illusion of a higher perspective without having to change your camera position.
Taking multiple digital exposures
With film cameras you can use one piece of film for multiple exposures. You do this by taking various shots without advancing the film; this technique used to be one of the most creative in photography. But ever since photographers started to become familiar with digital photography and photo-editing software, the art of double exposure became less relevant.
Some digital cameras don’t allow you to take multiple exposures on a single frame. You take an image and the next time you release the shutter, another image is created. Instead of taking multiple exposures, you now have the ability to put multiple images together in your editing software. (Chapter 18 tells you more about photo-editing techniques.) Creating this type of image in postproduction gives you more control over the final result and has brought on results that could never have been captured on film. Even so, it’s still fun to experiment with true multiple exposures. In this section, I reveal a technique that allows you to achieve multiple digital exposures in camera much as you would have with film.
Sometimes you achieve the best results when you allow yourself to be surprised. Shooting multiple exposures with the technique discussed in this section can cause you to lose some technical control. Don’t look at this loss of control as a bad thing though. If you’re surprised by the results, perhaps your viewers will be as well. Like Robert Frost once said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
To achieve multiple digital exposures in camera, you need to expose for a few seconds on one area and then quickly rotate the camera to another area to expose for a few seconds. Doing so creates one image with two compositions combined. It sounds tricky, but if you use the following guidelines when you create your exposures, you’ll be just fine:
Create a situation in which you can have at least a six-second exposure, which is the minimum for creating a digital double exposure. The longer your shutter is open, the more exposures you can include in your composition.
Use a neutral density filter when creating these long exposures. If you want to shoot a photo in a situation that doesn’t provide a low-light setting (such as at dusk or dawn), a filter can help. A filter that reduces your exposure by at least 10 stops is ideal. This way you can shoot during a bright, sunny day at an aperture setting of f/16 using an ISO of 100 and have an eight-second exposure. (Chapter 3 provides more information on ISO and aperture.)
Plan out your shot. To get multiple images on one digital frame, you have to move your camera during the exposure from one composition to the other. It’s important that you know how you need to move the camera to get the shots you want without any excessive movements. Observe your scene and choose a starting point and any other points where you’ll be composing. Practice the movements a few times beforehand so you have them down by the time you start shooting.
A tripod helps you move the camera quickly. Moving the camera slowly from one area to the next causes you to have streaks from the transition. To avoid these streaks, plan out the shot before starting the exposure and move quickly between exposures.
Be sure to fix the camera on your exposure’s subject for about two seconds. Because you have created a situation where little light is entering your lens, quick movements don’t affect your exposure. The camera has to be fixed on something for about two seconds to record anything noticeable. However, keep in mind that anything in motion will be affected with motion blur because you’re using a long exposure.
If you want one exposure to be more prevalent than the other, keep the camera pointed in that area for a longer portion of the total exposure than the other. Bright elements show more dominantly over darker elements.
Crafting soft, dream-like compositions
When you think of photography, you probably think about images that are in focus. A blurry photo is considered a failed attempt and is discarded as useless. It doesn’t represent the subject in an ideal way. People don’t want to look at blurry images; doing so makes them feel like something’s wrong with their eyesight. However, a certain quality in a blurry image is worth exploring.
As I discuss experimenting with images that don’t have a focal point, I refer to blurry as “soft” because it sounds better and seems appropriate for the mood you create by not having sharp focus. A soft image is subtle and provides a sense of secrecy. The finer details aren’t yours to know, so you focus on the other details in the image instead.
When you create a composition with no sharp focus, keep in mind that you’ll still have a focal point or a main subject. The subject’s story is going to be told through lines, shapes, and colors, but you lose the elements of texture, fine lines, and literal details. Basically you show the subject’s essence, so make sure it’s interesting. Throwing any old composition out of focus and calling it art usually is a mistake and won’t receive positive reviews.
Because you have fewer elements to work with in a soft composition, you have to pay extra careful attention to the ones you do have. Here are the elements to consider:
Lines: Your lines are softened but will still work as leading guides, telling a viewer where to look in the composition. Finer lines may be lost, which simplifies the composition and draws more attention to the bolder lines. Make sure your lines don’t take away from your composition in any way.
Shapes: Your shapes contain less detail and become very basic. However, they play a major role in your photo. If the shapes aren’t interesting, you have no reason to create this kind of image. Smoother shapes work better in soft compositions than rigid shapes.
Colors: Colors work as the strongest element in soft compositions. Because color appeals to people, it’s used in abstract art, interior design, and fashion to create compositions. If you can create an interesting composition of color, you don’t need sharp focus to tell a story.
Reinforce your subject as the focal point in a soft composition by keeping in mind elements like contrast, compositional placement, and size. Just because you don’t have the subject in focus doesn’t mean you can’t cause people to concentrate on it as the subject.
In Figure 12-11, I chose not to focus on anything in order to create a soft composition. The shapes in the composition are beautiful, the subject is recognizable even without detail, and the softness helps give a dream-like sense. I used color, contrast, and leading lines to reveal my subject as the focal point.
Figure 12-11: Soft compositions provide more feeling and less detail about a subject.