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The Art of Seeing
By Paul W. Faust
Over the years I have seen that there are two main problem areas with most photographer's
work; exposure and composition. Getting a correct exposure can be handled in many
ways, and now-a-days you can even set the camera to do it all for you. What I call
the PHD feature, which stands for, "Push Here Dummy!" If that were all it took,
then good photography could be done by anyone, but composition and the art of seeing
is a whole different story. There have been many articles written on the subject
of composition, but a well-composed image is more a matter of practice/experience
than it is one of following a list of rules. I for one have never been much for
other people's rules, but I am not saying that such rules are not an important base
of standards to follow, just that they are not written in stone. Even Ansel Adams
broke any and all of the rules of composition if it gave him the final results he
was after, and if it was good enough for him, then I don't much care what other
people think about it.
The best photo images are not taken anyway, they are "made," and I have always thought
that learning photo composition is not that much more different than learning anything
else. Some people just catch on faster than others, but eventually with practice
most people can do it. How long that will take mostly depends on how you go about
it. The only real way to practice composing an image is by recording them on film,
or digitally, so that you can see what you did right, and what you did wrong? It
is actually all of your mistakes that teach you how to do it right the next time.
However, just slapping a lens on your camera and shooting away is not the answer
either. As they say, "There has to be a method to the madness."
Many years ago I came across what is probably the best way to learn composition,
and also the hardest one to actually use, but the concept is very simple. You take
one camera body, one lens, one roll of film, and you pick one subject to shoot.
Then go out about town, or around the countryside, and fill that one roll with that
one subject only, but take your time doing it. Rushing things just leads to even
more mistakes that may not have anything to do with composition, but will lead to
confusion. You want to learn from "how" you did the shooting, and not because you
were rushed to do it.
What camera or film you use makes little difference, but I do suggest that you only
use a lens of 35mm or less. In fact, the wider the angle the lens is the better.
You will see what I mean when you start trying to compose an image that has a large
field of view. Telephoto lenses are too easy to compose things with. Just about
any way you turn it you can frame a shot with them, but a wide angle lens will make
you "work" to get things right. A distracting object will make you move in or around
to eliminate it, or if you need more of a tree branch across the top of the frame,
you may even have to lie down on the grass to get the amount of branch you need.
On a recent day trip I made to add some images to my stock files, I got an added
bonus of the illustration shown here for this article. For my one and only subject,
I decided to shoot some reflections wherever I could find them, but with the one
lens limit. I attached a Tamron 19-35mm wide-angle zoom lens to my Nikon 8008s and
went down town. I picked a day right after a large storm had just passed through,
as that is when you get a sky full of those big dramatic white clouds. (Love those!)
If you do use a zoom lens, stick to one focal length only. In this case I shot everything
at the 19mm setting.
Since I knew from past experience that tall office buildings always make for great
cloud reflections that is where I headed off to first. In the illustration shown
here, I included a bit of the lower framework of the building to add a base to the
image, and then framed the rest of the building to get in as much of the sky and
cloud reflections as possible. The wider focal length and the clouds right over
top made it feel like the window glass went up and on forever. This is the final
image you see here, and it is a later manipulation test using Adobe Photoshop, where
I used the solarize filter on the sky area and got an even more dramatic effect
than was created by the building alone.
One last tip on composition. If any object that appears in the viewfinder's frame
does not "Enhance" your image, then it will most often "detract from" the image.
That applies in ALL areas of photography. Get rid of it any way possible, either
when composing the shot, or later on in an imaging software program if you have
one, but get rid of it. For an added learning tool, take two shots of that subject.
One with the distraction, and another shot without it, and when you compare the
two side by side you will see first hand exactly why that rule exists.
Once you try this composition test, and see just how demanding it is, you will also
see how much better your images start looking as you learn how to better compose
them.
GOOD SHOOTING!
About the Author
Paul W. Faust is a self-taught Photographer, Writer, Digital Imaging, Photo Restoration,
and Photo Stock Service professional.
His work has been published in American Photographer, Camera 35, Camera and Darkroom,
Popular Photography, Photographic, Photographers Forum, www.apogeephoto.com and
here at TPN. Past assignments have included many cover images, full-page spreads,
and also shooting stills for both Hollywood movie sets, and for star hopefuls including
Bo Derick, Heather Locklear, and Pricilla Barns, among others. Paul's images have
also been used by; NikonNet, Bogen Photo Imaging, East Tennessee Film Commission,
and The Knoxville Zoo, to name a few, including their web sites.
Paul can be reached at
pwf_iol@yahoo.com
If you have any comments regarding the TPN articles, please contact us at:
editor@travelphotographers.net.
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