Except for the occasional accident my pictures lacked
direction or originality. I could copy a technique, which I quickly found to be
unsatisfying, but I couldn't get composition!
Composition is taught as a series of elements but it seems
to me the most important part of composition is assumed to be understood. I
believe the success or failure of a work rests upon the clarity with which we
understand the message we want to convey and our understanding of how we see.
I remember back in the early 80's I was working on a
composition of an old boat grounded along the shore. It had been there so long
that it was visibly rotting and one of the things I really liked about the
scene was the bright green moss growing on the stern of the boat.
I had worked on this composition for months. I tried
different lighting conditions, different lenses, different weather conditions,
etc, etc, etc. Everything I did in print was woefully inadequate to scene there
before my eyes!
And then one day just as I was pressing the shutter, a snowy
egret landed on the stern and I knew that was what was missing from the scene.
I didn't have to wait for the film to be developed or see what I had captured
on paper – I knew that was the missing element of my composition. It was from
that point on that I started to take charge of my compositions. I became a
creator rather than a taker.
The funny thing about balance for me is it implies that
there must be weight. And weight becomes extremely challenging in a visual
context since an object of the same size, shape, and color will have different
visual weight when in different parts of the visual field. Even more curious to
me is how we perceive an object of the same size, shape, and location and by
simply changing the color it will have a different visual weight! Our vision is
very dynamic!
So how do we find balance in our pictures? Except for
experiments with the most regular of shapes no formula can replace the
intuitive sense of the eye. By moving a pair of 90 degree pieces of matte board
around a picture until frame and picture balance is the simplest way of finding
the visual center.
A couple of posts ago, I posted the below picture of a Lynx.
There are a lot of things I like about this framing (virtually no cropping
whatsoever). I have delineated the rule thirds here to help demonstrate the
compositional train of thought. In future posts we'll explore the golden ratio
to better understand where the rule of thirds came from and why it is more
popular than the more artistic golden ratio.
But let's explore this shot a bit further by cropping it in
a couple of different ways to see if we can find something a bit more
compelling.
Here I have cropped the image so the cat is more centered
than the original shot. For me, this crop removes a lot of tension thus feeling
more static. That isn't exactly the feel I'm looking for in this shot and the
shot of the Lynx on the far right hand side gives me the feeling that the
animal is going to jump out of the picture while this shot gives me the feeling
he is going to sit down and go to sleep.
On the final crop, I have done a portrait type of crop and
that's exactly how the picture feels to me. In fact, I get the profound feeling
this is a stuffed animal in this shot and believe me that is not the case.
While the Lynx is a captive animal, he was quite alive when I shot him at the
Triple D Game Farm in Kalispell , MT.
One of the things I like to do when I am considering the balance of a shot is to print it out and lay it down on the kitchen table so I am constantly looking at it from different angles. It never fails that when I do this, I come up with a plan that I am comfortable with and describes the message I want to say in the best way possible.
Next week, we'll take a look at more elements of balance to
consider and how our eye reacts to these elements.
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