More About Composition

More About Composition

by William Lulow

I saw an interesting exhibition a week or so ago, in San Francisco of an artist named Joan Mitchell, who is an abstract painter who did some very interesting pieces. This is one:

I think that what makes any composition good is that first, it has to hold the viewer’s attention. There have to be elements present that kind of make the piece interesting to view. In this case, the two rectangles in the upper left portion of the canvas seem to do that. We are all taught that light colors seem to jump out at us while darker ones tend to recede to the background. Here, the colors are represented throughout the piece, but those rectangles seem to be more important. The muted colors just seem to fit like pieces of a puzzle and that’s part of what makes this a strong composition.

Remembering that light colors stand out and dark ones recede is an important consideration for any composition. Many times, because of aerial haze or other ambient lighting features, these things can affect the impact of a particular image. Here is an example:

What happened here is that I had a very cloudy, kind of rainy day, where the light was fairly flat and not contrasty enough to make a decent impact. I waited for a while until there was some definition in the clouds and then made the picture, knowing that I would have to add more contrast in post-production. The addition of the contrast and the little bit of blue sky, finally made the image strong enough to stand on its own to represent this particular view of the canyon. (Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. The image was made with a Canon 20mm f/2.8 lens, 1/200th of a second at f/9, ISO 400. I knew that I would have to work on this in order to bring out the extra contrast. I also added a neutral density #8 filter over the lens to boost the contrast a bit.

In one of the last blogs I talked about shooting images on vacation. When you are traveling and you know you won’t be able to wait for optimal lighting conditions, you need to know that you will need to do some post production work on them and how exactly, you would make the composition better.

Here’s another image that was made under less-than-optimal conditions:

The wet pavement was due to a brief shower that passed through. Believe it or not, I have actually, physically done this to a parking lot for a hotel shoot. The reflections are what makes this shot.

Here’s another one made a bit after dusk:

The top part of the sky had already turned dark, but the rest of the image with the sunset, was perfect. Composition relies on several factors to make it all work:

1. Physical placement of objects within the frame
2. Interesting lighting that attracts the viewer’s eye
3. Visually arresting content

These, to my mind, are the most important elements in any composition. One of these factors can make for a good composition. All of them put together make for outstanding images. Photographers need to be on the lookout for these elements when they are “chasing light” (term borrowed from Rick Friedman) on their various photo safaris. Here’s another example with a black&white image: (This image was made in original B&W, not a conversion):

Here the various elements of leaning trees and branches along with a dark sky and white waves, add to the overall impact of the image. I love to shoot in original black&white for several reasons. One, filters can be added to the camera to aid the shooting process and two, form is much more emphasized when there is no color, which sometimes detracts from the pure arrangement of elements within the frame. This is something to be considered when you are doing any kind of shooting.