More Composition Basics

I like Alfred Eisenstadt photos.  He had a long and illustrious career in photography, and when you think of news photography of the Time and Life Magazine ilk, it's probably his photos that come to your mind.  Like this one, the famous kiss on VE Day in Times Square.  By the way, I borrowed this image from the interweb someplace (actually, this place) so go there and read the article if you like.  It's cool from an art history perspective.

But don't take it too seriously.  Eisenstadt did not compose his photos using the principles described in excruciating detail.  Who could do that?  But the article is not suggesting that he did, only that we like his images because they followed certain presumably immutable laws of composition.  Once again, I will fall back on my Ansel Adams quote "There are no rules for good photographs.  There are just good photographs."

Having said that, I will actually say that the elements of composition that make one photograph more interesting than another photograph should be studied and thought about as you practice training your eye with the camera.

Let's take a look at another photo I took a couple of years ago while visiting the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Let's break this image down into some compositional elements, just for fun.

First, the background defines the frame, so check this out:

Note that the image is divided into a lighter block on the top and a darker one on the bottom, and that the horizon is not exactly in the center of the frame.  The darker portion of the background at the bottom provides weight and sort of anchors the frame. You sort of imagine that the bottom portion is heavy, and the top portion (sky) is light, and the proportion is such that the heavier part is smaller than the lighter part, providing a sort of balance.  Like one of those old punching bags we had as kids (well, I did anyway), there is something heavy on the bottom and the top is full of air, such that if I gave it a shove, it would rock back and forth but finally settle back into this configuration.

Next, note that the composition in broad terms is geometric except for the figure.  It's all blocks and lines and triangles and angles, except for the curve of the body.  Like this:

I know this is getting messy, but hopefully you see my point.  The figure, through its curvature, stands out against the other elements that are linear.  And that produces some interest as well as separation of the figure from the ground.

Finally, take a look at this:

The figure is leaning in such a way that you imagine he is about to fall into the water, and only that thin line in his hand is preventing this disaster!  In fact, you almost want to tilt your own body in the opposite direction when you look at this photo, to prevent the accident that seems about to happen.

And that provides the movement and tension in the photo.

Now, I obviously did not set this photo up with the sailor.  But I did recognize that as he worked I might find a decent image that communicated the feeling of being  on the boat.  The original shot looked like this:

You can see that I cropped this to make the more interesting photo above from this not very interesting shot.  But, like I keep saying, for me the fun is to use the camera to capture a potential image, and then going to hunt for it in post production.