Harold Davis - Composition & Photography: Working with Photography Using Design Concepts

Theres always one in every barrel!Thinly slicing fruits and vegetables and putting them on a light box was a grand experiment. With these compositions an important consideration is how to arrange an apparently arbitrary grouping while maintaining an underlying structure. With these Pink Lady apple slices, I intentionally left one apple stem intact so that there was something unique and differentiated for the viewers eye to begin processing the image.

Nikon D850, 100mm Zeiss Makro-Planar, seven exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 1/40 of a second to 1.6 seconds, each exposure at f/14 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

edward

WESTON

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.

ansel

ADAMS

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photographor indeed any visual imagecomposition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time one of the most elusive. What makes a composition good?

We may not know what makes a composition good, but some compositions resonate, and we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it.

We also know that composition is the fundamental scaffolding of image-making. If you get it wrong in the camera, composition is the hardest element of an image to fix in post-production. Indeed, sloppy compositions often cannot be (and should not be) repaired in Photoshop.

Without an interesting and exciting composition, a photo will appear rudderless, empty, and lack compelling interest. The scene that was captured may be pretty, but the resulting image wont catch the eye and fire the imagination.

Delving a little deeper, after acknowledging the importance of composition, we come to the realization that the only rule is that there are no rules. Its indeed hard to create any unified theory of compositional construction that bears up across a wide universe of image-making. But as I already observed, we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable strong emotional response when a composition resonates with the subject matter of an image.

As the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson put it in the context of his own work, in addition to capturing the decisive moment in a composition, there needs to be an instinctive sense of geometry of the situation.

Thus, composition is crucial, and recognizable to both photographers and the viewers of their images. However, attempts to define good composition and, more importantly, to convey rules for good compositional construction dont work.

The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected: Expect the unexpected!

Embracing the unexpected means becoming comfortable with spontaneity, serendipity, and change as a part your artistic practice.

Expecting the unexpected is probably the only viable rule of composition. Codification of composition risks eliminating experimentation and spontaneity, vitiates unexpected serendipity, and violates this rule.

Hey, there are no rules! So whats the point of this book?

Forgetting about rules, there are ways of looking at subject mattercompositionsthat can be very helpful.

Composition is a process, its not a hard-and-fast set of rules, and it is not just the end result.

Books about composition do tend to teach composition as a subject that can be clearly divided into a system of rules, such as the so-called rule of thirds. These rules are not necessarily wrong, but they are not generally applicable, and they should not be followed slavishly. Excessively following rules inhibits creativity.

Composition is not actually a system of rules: it is a process. My goal is to help photographers with the process of composition in the absence of hard-and-fast rules.

While there are many possible ways to interact with photographic composition, the approach I take in Composition & Photography is to show how patterns and abstractions can be perceived and encouraged as an underlying and fundamental part of composition.

To abstract something is to reduce the thing to fundamentals, or to show a familiar thing in an unfamiliar light using an interesting and applicable metaphor.

Window and ShadowIn this deceptively simple and contemplative composition, the photograph delivers a sense of enclosure while looking out the window at a brilliantly lit afternoon. The power of the composition comes from the near symmetry of the lit window and its shadow on a nearby wall in an otherwise unadorned room. This simplicity of composition adds a sense of isolation to the conversation between photographer and viewer.