| In this, the second article on composition in photography we are going to take a closer look at placing the main subject of an image within the frame of the viewfinder.
How the various items are placed within an image, along with their relationships to each other and to the borders of the image can have a great effect on the emotions created in the viewer. You would probably take a very different approach to composing an image to hang on your wall than if it was to be used in an advert for instance, even if it was the same subject.
Rule of Thirds
We have mentioned the rule of thirds in a previous article, but why is it important? and how did it come about?
It is believed that Pythagoras, the man with the hypotanuse, tried an exercise with his students whereby he held up a length of twine and asked them whereabouts he should make a knot, such that it would be in the most pleasing position. After suitable deliberation, they agreed on a point on the twine which turned out to be 0.38 of the way along the length of the twine.
Pythagoras declared this to be 'a harmonius proportion in tune with the universe'. Or more likely, the ancient Greek equivalent.
When Euclid discovered this a couple of centuries later he came up with a rather more complicated description. He decided that it was a 'ratio whereby the smaller part is to the larger as the larger is to the whole'. That's a complicated way of saying that, see diagram below, the length BC divided by length AB is the same as the whole length AC divided by BC. This later became known as the Golden Mean or Golden Section.
If the twine was 100cm long, the knot would be at 38cm from one end and 62cm from the other. These days we are not quite as adept at mental arithmetic as Pythagoras and his students, so we settle for the knot being one third of the way along. In this case 33cm.
We can ranslate this into two dimensions by folding the short length AB at right angles and producing the rectangle shown above, which has the same proportions.
We don't need to stick rigidly to these guidelines, but arranging our subjects within the frame with this golden ratio in mind tends to produce an image most folk find attractive. It can't work with all subjects in all circumstances, but it's surprising how often it produces the goods. However, if you are trying to be truly creative you can't really allow yourself to be constrained by such rules. They are only guidelines, allthough well proven ones.
Similar Concepts
Over the centuries artists have come up with a number of guidlines to help them produce paintings and architecture with wide appeal or to generate emotional responses in the viewer. These are not generally as rigid or as easily defined as the golden ratio but are nevertheless proven to work.
Distance Between Points
The eye and the brain tend to act with surprising similarity when people view a scene. If there are two main focal points within an image, say two people or either end of a wall, the eye will tend to treat the space between them as a straight line. If this is horozontal the eye will find the two points, then settle on a point of balance between the two. If the line is vertical the eye will generally start from the bottom, scan to the top and then settle on the mid point.
This will change if two lines intersect. For instance a wall in the middle distance may be crossed by the vertical edge of a building behind it, the eye tends to rest where the two intersect.
If you did not watch out for these issues you may find that a viewer's attention may rest on an insignificant point in the background and miss your intended point of focus.
Static Point
Given no other distractions, when looking at a rectangle the eye will often rest in the centre of this rectangle. When the only influences on the eye are the edges of the rectangle, it tends to settle on this central point because it is an equal distance from each of the edges. This is known as the static point.
If a roughly uniform shape is placed at this static point it will appear stationary. If a non-uniform shape is placed here the only sense of movement will be whatever is suggested by it's shape. Hence a ball lying near the centre static point will appear to be completely still even if it was flying through the air when you took the shot. On the other hand, an item such as a javelin frozen in flight will still tend to suggest movement merely by its shape and proportions.
Image Corners
An item placed near a corner of the image will suggest movement toward that corner. The impact of this suggested movement will depend upon how close to the corner it is as well as the shape of the item.
Using these Guidelines
You can probably see that a wide range of reactions can be drawn from a viewer by working with even just these few guidelines in mind.
Grab your camera right now and open the nearest window. Pick something like the nearest lamp post and take a few shots with it in different places within the image. If there is a tree or a shrub with a more rounded shape close by, repeat the exercise so that you can compare the results with two different shapes.
Try picking maybe a door or window on a nearby building and placing it near the corners of the image and near the centre.
Upload these to your computer and compare them on the screen, or better, print them out and examine how they fit in with the above guidelines.
In the next article in this series on composition we will look at a few more similar guidelines and maybe try a more practicle exercise to get used to thinking about them.
Further Reading
If you would like to learn more about this aspect of photography,
check out 'Learn to See Creatively'
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