Tom Clark - Digital Photography Composition For Dummies

50mm, WOO sec, VIS, 400

Figure 4-11:Repetition is used to guide your eyes through the frame and inform you about the subject.

One way to capture attention even more strongly than a pattern itself is to show a break in a pattern. Technically, a break in a pattern could be considered a flaw, and flaws stick out visually like sore thumbs. However, you can use this attention to your advantage; Figure 4-12 proves it. Which window draws your eyes the most?

In the figure, the windows with no lights create the pattern. The one window with the lights on stands out as being different from the rest. If you take advantage of the situation and incorporate your subject in the broken area of the pattern, your subject will stand out for sure.

Sometimes the flaw in the pattern can work alone as your subject. For instance, a row of trees in which one has been chopped down could provide a message of taking only what's needed. A row of tree stumps with only one tree standing would provide a message of greed and abuse.

Figure 4-12:A break in the pattern can grab your attention more strongly than the pattern itself.

In This Chapter

Understanding the different areas of an image

Aiming for a more pleasing composition with the rule of thirds

Making the most out of the space in your frame

Deciding between simple and chaotic compositions

Creating balance in a composition to keep a viewer's attention longer

R ookie photographersoften instinctually place a subject dead center in a frame, but doing so rarely produces a great-looking photograph. So, as a photographer, one of the first things you need to recognize is that keeping your subject out of the center creates better compositions. In the world of visual arts, thousands of years of practice show that artists rarely obtain the ideal image of a subject by placing it in the center of a frame.

Think about it this way: If you placed a person's face directly in the center of your frame, you have just as much space above the head (referred to as headroom) as you do below the head. The person has an entire body below her head and nothing above it. So why waste the space above the person's head by showing nothing but the sky or your backdrop when you could eliminate that space and show more of the person's body?

As a photographer, you choose what to shoot and how to position that subject in your frame. The "rules" — okay, they're more like guidelines — I pose in this chapter get you started in the right direction; understanding them is the first step toward improving the way you take pictures.

Atypical scene is made up of these three different areas:

The foreground:This area contains elements that are the closest to the camera.

The background:This area is made up of anything that's the farthest from the camera or that's behind the subject itself.

The midground:This is the space between the foreground and background.

You can compose an image that contains just a foreground and a background, but including a foreground, midground, and background in your compositions can maximize the illusion of depth. The separate areas work together to give the sense of space.

In most cases, your subject can exist in the foreground or the midground. Exceptional situations enable you to photograph your subject in the background (such as mountains or a storm on the horizon as your subject), but these cases are rare.

Because the foreground is the most prevalent to the viewer, placing your subject there is an easy way to make it stand out in your image. This position, which is closest to your camera, maximizes the size of your subject in relation to the other elements in your scene, causing it to seem important to a viewer. In this situation, the subject makes up the foreground and everything else is considered the background. However, to create a composition that's more dynamic and contains more depth, photographers often place the subject in the midground with supporting elements in the foreground and background.

When your subject occupies the midground, you can use foreground elements to lead a viewer into the scene. Supporting foreground elements often are blurry when compared to the subject because they're outside the range of your plane of focus, which determines what's sharp and what's blurred. (For information on focus, check out Chapter 7.)

Figure 5–1 shows an image composed to have a foreground, midground, and background. The tree on the left side of the frame and the brush on the ground make up the foreground in this scene. They give you a sense of what the environment is like and lead your eyes to the subject in the midground, which is the house with the two dummies. The subject is the main focus of the image and is supported by the foreground and the background. The

mountains and the sky make up the background in this image. They work with the foreground to create the illusion of depth, which causes your eyes to wander around the image, exploring the different areas and gathering information about the subject. The combination of the foreground, midground, and background tells a lot about where this shack is located and how sparse the human population is there.

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Figure 5–1:The foreground, midground, and background in this image give a sense of depth.

The most common composition guideline is the rule of thirds, which refers to the photographic technique of dividing your frame into thirds horizontally and vertically to determine which areas have the most aesthetic quality. By placing key elements on a frame's thirds, you can create compositions that are easy to look at and can break the habit of placing your subject in the center. Getting your subject out of the frame's center produces more interesting, dynamic results. In the following sections, I show you how to take advantage of the rule of thirds to take the best photos possible.

Your subject consists of whatever seems most important to you in any scene. If you're having a difficult time identifying your subject, ask yourself why you're taking the picture in the first place. Are you creating a landscape that highlights the river curving off into the distance? If so, the river is your subject. If you're taking a person's portrait, the person is clearly the subject. You may have multiple subjects in one scene. In that case, you can use the rule of thirds to prioritize each subject.

To use the rule of thirds, imagine four lines (two vertical and two horizontal — picture a tic-tac-toe board) dividing your frame into nine equal boxes, as in Figure 5–2. These lines determine the sweet spots for positioning your scene's key elements, such as your subject.

View the image in Figure 5–2 to get an idea of how photographers typically use a frame's thirds. Notice how the woman's eyes are lined up along the top third of the frame and the horizon in the background is lined up along the bottom third. Plus, the woman's eyes are lined up with the left third of the frame rather than being centered.

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Figure 5–2:The rule of thirds in action.

The areas where the horizontal and vertical lines of thirds intersect — called golden points — are known to have the highest visual impact. (You can read more about golden points in Chapter 4.) Placing a key element in one of these areas makes it one of the strongest visual elements in the frame. As you can see in Figure 5–2, the woman's eyes are placed near the intersection in the upper left-hand corner.