The only possible general conclusion concerning composition in photography is that circumstances alter cases. Rules should act not as restrictions but as guides that will assist you more often than not. If there are good enough reasons to break them, you should do so without qualms. No rule should be followed without question. You should be looking for reasons to make exceptions even while applying rules.
There are three useful ways of testing the validity of any composition. They are all based on the assumption that a picture that looks right usually is right, regardless of how far it may seem to depart from conventional standards.
1. For the first method, cut out two L-shaped pieces of gray or white cardboard (if gray on one side and white on the other, their edges can be seen clearly against any sort of picture). Face them in opposite directions, overlaid to make a frame of adjustable proportions, on top of a full-negative print. Move it around so that it frames varying parts of the image, and vary its proportions as you go. If you can make a stronger composition by cropping the image, then reprint doing so. There is nothing sacred about the proportions of standard film dimensions. You can crop a side or bottom or top any time that a given image is thereby improved. There is also nothing immutable about how you composed while looking through the viewfinder. You may well find it better to print and display only a portion of the image on any given negative.
2. The second method of analysis is better suited to guiding your future work than to saving what you have already done. If you make a picture that just does not "look right," hold a thumb over the various major or minor picture elements one at a time. If the picture looks better without that element, it should not have been included. But if the picture looks weaker by its absence, that element can be considered necessary. If such deletion does not strengthen the picture, perhaps you had no potentially successful composition to start with. Although this is a post-mortem device (to see why the picture died), it may help to prevent a similar catastrophe in the future.
3. Finally, it is beneficial to allow time to affect your judgment. Reserve some wall space for hanging your best efforts for long-term examination. See how well you can live with an image. Should you become tired of it before long, try to analyze why. Is the picture dull? Do subtle flaws become obtrusive with time? Does the image have a posterlike "grab-the-eye" quality without sufficient complexity to engage the mind more than temporarily?
There is nothing like time to give you the answer to these questions, and others that will come to you. Sometimes, in fact, pictures that you had first thought to be rather slight develop staying power to a remarkable degree. (These are the really subtle ones.) Let time pass while you keep on looking and thinking.
Find out more things about Camera Photography and Tips To Take Photos. Check out Basic Camera Photography for more information.
No comments:
Post a Comment