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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> What makes a good composition?
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 06/07/2006 12:11:21 PM · #1
This is going to be the theme up for open discussion at my photo club meeting tomorrow. Anyone have some talking points for me to get the ball rolling? I have my opinions but I̢۪d love to hear others. All input is appreciated.

06/07/2006 12:13:13 PM · #2
06/07/2006 12:24:38 PM · #3
Doesn't your intended audience factor your choice of composition? What I mean by this is, if your image is to be displayed to a group with an artistic background then adhering to rigid standard rules of composition are important. If you image is going on display at the local fair, compose your subject in such a way that is most appealing to the subject, and if it means bending the "rules" some - do it.

You wanted talking points, right? ;^)
 06/07/2006 12:52:11 PM · #4
Originally posted by glad2badad:
Doesn't your intended audience factor your choice of composition? What I mean by this is, if your image is to be displayed to a group with an artistic background then adhering to rigid standard rules of composition are important. If you image is going on display at the local fair, compose your subject in such a way that is most appealing to the subject, and if it means bending the "rules" some - do it.

You wanted talking points, right? ;^)


Exactly! Everyone has a different definition of what makes a good composition and that's what I'm looking for. What do you think makes a good compositon.
 06/07/2006 12:57:18 PM · #5
Originally posted by e301:


Great example, how do I put that into words? Symmetry + Rule of thirds + negative space?
 06/07/2006 01:12:42 PM · #6
You're asking for something that's hard to define. There are so many variables...I mean there's always the rule of thirds, leading lines, etc...but different subjects may have an approach that is better than another. An abstract image may fill the entire frame. A minimalist approach to a cow in a field could be interesting, while a close-up of that same cow showing the eye and an ear might work also.

In the long run, isn't a good composition defined by being able to tell an interestiing story and/or holding the viewer's interest?

You should have an interesting meeting at your photo club! Best of luck to you. ;^)
 06/07/2006 01:33:56 PM · #7
IMO, one of the hallmarks of good composition is when subject and composition marry so well that you can't imagine presenting the image any other way. That doesn't cover ALL good composition, but it's a good benchmark.

An image like JJ's bridge shot (shown by e301) is an excellent example of a very unusual composition that does NOT follow "my" benchmark above; it's completely outside that box. It's EASY to imagine shooting the bridge some other way, but this is nevertheless a powerful composition.

Why? It's symmetrical around the horizontal axis yet asymmetrical on the vertical axis. It marries positive space to negative space, yet incorporates "ghost space" as well. It is austere and detached, and yet it incorporates a distinctly human grace note that lifts it even higher. It follows no "rule" of composition, right down to the very shape of the image, and yet one can easily discern that the photographer rigorously applied his own, image-specific "rules" to the making of it.

Does that help, LoudDog?

R.
 06/07/2006 01:40:09 PM · #8
//www.morguefile.com/archive/classroom.php?lesson=11

Here you go this might help you out. I thought it was pretty interesting.
 06/07/2006 03:33:49 PM · #9
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
IMO, one of the hallmarks of good composition is when... you can't imagine presenting the image any other way...
[omission mine]

Yes, that's good. Also that bit about relating subject and the multiple aspects of composition.

I wouldn't use the term marry, which, ideally, relates a sort of harmonious balance. I can agree with balance as a spatial attribute but also consider tension, stresses and latent attractions/repulsions either inherent and measurable or latent and psychological (as alluded to).

Thinking concretely, a good composition is one that works (the same way we would say that a chair is well made if it doesn't wobble). Specifically (and more abstractly, perhaps), a photo or any visual piece may be perceived as a field of energy (-ies), all of which should form one organic whole.

A great composition, in my view, is one which integrates (either harmoniously or by antithesis) both the givens (scene, subject and everything else you wouldn't have, if the lens cap had not been removed) and the deliberate elements only the photographer brought to it (manner, perspective, framing etc.).

Even if the composition is not explicitly made but found, it would still take a compositionally trained and concerning eye to recognize and elect a value and, occasionally, some skill to time it advantageously.
 06/07/2006 05:15:33 PM · #10
A short answer to the question of what is (good) composition by John Graham -
I apologize for bringing this historical baggage into the discussion but I enjoy comparisons to this mans short answers to big questions.

Question # 20 What is composition and what is it based upon?
from John Graham's System & Dialectics of Art

"Composition is a design ( two-dimensional or three-dimensional).
It is based on intuitive and creative elements and is a unique entity in itself.
Composition is consorting of the forms observed or divorcing of the same in a harmonious inevitable way.

Composition does not depend on the pure perfection of design.
Composition is a design personified, a design not mechanically perfect but emotionally perfect. A design of an evocative nature. Design that is magic.

In a perfect composition shapes excluded and shapes included are equally important. Every shape is a law unto itself and all shapes together (as a unit) are law unto themselves.

Artists powerfully contracts certain spaces and expands the others into submission to the plan conveived by his unconscious and realized by his conscious mind.

Pure composition belongs to the domain of art."
06/07/2006 05:38:52 PM · #11
We the photographers.. has the ability to control viewers eyes.. just to a short period of time..

we can freez reality..
as is in that reality we set up.. we have the ability to create something even greater...!!!

we can decide where the viewers eyes will go in that image...

my advice..

set up a few shots.. make the viewrs watch it reall quick and hide it again.. youll notice interesting stuff will happen.. their eyes will be led by the composition of the shot... thats how we can outline object in a shot..

hopw i helped

06/07/2006 06:07:18 PM · #12
Probably already covered but here are some things to think about:

1-Decide exactly what you trying to capture either before you go on a photo shoot or while you are composing a picture and BEFORE you click the shutter.

2-Eliminate clutter and distractions. If there is anything at all in the frame that does not directly support the theme then reframe and recompose the image.

3-Lighting is everything. It is your most important compositional element. Carefully consider it in every shot.

4-Decide on perspective based on image theme. For example, if you want to emphasize the immense size of the Egyptian pyramids take them from ground level looking up, not strait on.

5-Center the main subject and/or important supportive objects on the rule of thirds intersection points or lines possible.

6-Remember photographic fundamentals and apply them where appropriate to compositionally support your image theme. For example, leading lines to infinity is a good mechanism to emphasize vast distance in the desert.

7-Get it right in the camera, don't fix it later in photoshop.

8-Never neglect technical excellence post processing. Light, focus, contrast, tonality, color (or lack thereof), full luminosity range and image balance must be perfect. Avoid loss of important detail because of overexposed hot spots and/or underexposed shadows. An important element in winning DPC photos that puts them over the top id technical excellance. That separates the ordinary from the extraodinary.

Message edited by author 2006-06-07 18:07:47.
 06/07/2006 08:35:46 PM · #13
rules & breaking them aside. make an uninterested viewer say WOW.
 06/07/2006 11:17:31 PM · #14
Originally posted by soup:
rules & breaking them aside. make an uninterested viewer say WOW.

Oh... not saying you do this, soup, but this reminds me about rules...

Learn the rules and use them in your photography BEFORE you start breaking them. :)
 06/08/2006 11:54:32 AM · #15
Thanks all! I'll print this up and bring up some of your points if the discussion goes flat.
 06/08/2006 12:01:22 PM · #16
I have trouble with composition, especially in my artwork, but it helps me to think of the photo as a face and the composition as the facial expression.
 06/08/2006 01:33:56 PM · #17
I love to break rules. most rules (especially the rule of thirds) are created to make the image seem more natural and appealing, which is by definition a good thing. lots of times though, I like to intentionally make people uncomfortable with my pictures, which is primarily the theme, but can be accentuated by the rule breaking.



that was the whole point of centering this. I tried other crops, but this one gave the it most surreal and disconcerting feel.



horizons needn't always be level, as demostrated by one of my all-time SP faves, e301



and unusual crops can higlight certain features, even though it may seem unconventional.

all that said, for most images I try to respect rules...that's why breaking them seems like so much fun when you do it :)

P-ness
 06/08/2006 02:09:55 PM · #18
Try to "imagine" this shot with different compositions. The "subject", inasmuch as it has one, is the sky. How would it work if it were ALL sky? How about if the headland were cropped off on the right? What if it had more water? More land on the right? The image is breaking all sorts of rules, but I think it has a tangible "presence" that derives largely from its unconventional composition.



See if you can put into words the essence, or the mood, of this shot, as an exercise to see how the composition is "working".

R.
 06/08/2006 03:58:49 PM · #19
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Try to "imagine" this shot with different compositions. The "subject", inasmuch as it has one, is the sky. How would it work if it were ALL sky? How about if the headland were cropped off on the right? What if it had more water? More land on the right? The image is breaking all sorts of rules, but I think it has a tangible "presence" that derives largely from its unconventional composition.



See if you can put into words the essence, or the mood, of this shot, as an exercise to see how the composition is "working".

R.


The easiest analysis of this derives from perhaps the simplest way of looking at it - which is simply to let your eye wander the image shown. The difficult thing about that, is to engage your brain at the same time as dis-engaging your eye; your brain registers the areas, the scenes, the patterns you see, and analyses, and makes connections, but at the same time to allow your eye to be lead by the photographer is not an easy state of looking to achieve.

The first process here, for me, was an absorption with the tonality of light - the natural balance between the deep ethereal blue and the vivid orange of the sunset sky - complementary colours, as is no accident. The next movement is toward the brightest part of frame, which is the right-hand side. Vision is always drawn to the brightest thing in 'frame', that's a natural and unavoidable human tendency. However, after simple brightness, which only fools the eye into its attraction for a brief moment, the next most attractive thing to the attention is a defined shape - even more so in this composition, which has a near-impressionist lack of definition in its subject (that sky). Shape? Well, it may not be much, but that silhouetted island or headland is the next point of interest - enough to hold the eye, but not the attention, lacking any depth as it is.

And then we come to a specific phenomenon often used by many masters of composition - repetition. It doesn't matter what the shape is, although it must almost universally have a certain simplicity to it, be easily and immediately apprehended by the eye, but if that shape is repeated then we make that connection very quickly; that elongated blob of the head-/island is enough to draw a connection with the small shapes of the boats, and draw the eye back across frame.

Now we should note the movement throughout the image that we've achieved so far. Starting dead centre, where the eye is always beginning its journey, we're pulled to the right; then lower at the right, and then back across the image to the left, but low down - overall, a small zig-zag across the bottom of the image. However, the eye doesn't only see the one immediate specific item it's looking at (how else would it ever be drawn elsewhere?). Arching above that movement, is a very subtle compositional trick ...

There is some detail in the sky - primarily in the low clouds just above the horizon. Those edges - and it is only edges that give us detail - lie just above the previous movement of our gaze - but there's more to it than that, even. In the same way that those areas of detail in those clouds arch over the shapes in the water that our eye has followed, so there is an absolute arch of white across the top of the frame - more even than that, a collection of lines emanating from a central point of this image. Those lines of clouds, very nearly like eye-lashes, across the top of frame, are absolutely essential to the impact of this image; because of the point they emanate from - that areas of greatest detail in the clouds, because of the simplicity, the naturalness, the familiarity, of that shape - as I said, like eyelashes, like streams running from a mountain-top, like the way a child might draw lines around something to draw attention to it, they provide the most powerful incentive to allow the eye to repeat it's journey. The arch of them allows a journey up and across the frame, back towards that right-hand bright part of the image, and thus around again to the defined shapes. Of itself, the arch-shape is an attractive form, that curving leap allowing a sense of gravity, of real movement as our eye follows it, and as if by magic, we're back not quite where we started, but in a familiar part of the visual journey we have taken.

Oh, and of we were in any doubt, almost every shape that definable in this image has a flat base and a curved top - that headland, the boats, the clouds, and that 'arch'. This is a more difficult idea, but even the most 'complex' images that are successful, can usually be reduced to an idea of repeating themes of shapes - take a look at JJ's more difficult submissions to see how that works. The difficulty being that these shapes are about areas of the photograph, rather than obvious geometrical forms, or patterns. We only have to hint at those repetitions for the effect to work, and part of the sophistication of photographers like Robert is that that has become second nature.

Here's one of mine (I think, after all these words, I'm allowed a little exhibition?) that works on the same principle: how many little areas of parallel receding lines do you see here?



e
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