Therefore, it is important to learn and understand the rules and guides of composing through the viewfinder while determining how to put them to work for you. However, learning when to ignore them is key to your evolution as a photographer. Before your left brain can be freed from the chains of technical constraint and before technique fades to the unconscious and becomes second nature as you explore your subjects with abandon in a beautiful dance of color, tones, and light—you have to pay your dues. That is, put in the time learning all you can from this book, and most important, through personal experience. When you do this and you persevere, I guarantee you will get to a place of photographic competence and satisfaction you can’t even imagine right now. Before I go further, it’s worth mentioning that I’ve never been one to break down the component parts of an image, spill them on the floor, and scientifically analyze them. There is mystery and magic to the creative process that can’t be articulated. Sometimes an image can adhere to all the rules and guides, and end up being perfectly boring. The photographic process at its highest level is akin to a musician arranging notes that provoke emotions or a designer stimulating your senses. Personally, if I had to articulate what I do as I dance around the composition, I would say I’m trying to compose my pictures by arranging visual elements for maximum impact and communication. We don’t always do it on a conscious level, but with experience we learn to constantly scan the viewfinder, looking at the placement of lines and form, the balance of objects, the relationship with foreground and background elements, and the scale between them.
WORK THE SCENE Once your photograph is found, working the composition can be a very subtractive process as you eliminate clutter, cleaning up and organizing image elements to focus attention on what you deem important. Scan the edges of the frame to make sure you’re not missing anything, and look for details that can be improved by cropping or inclusion within the frame (Figures 10.5–10.10). Sometimes there is an energy and movement created with a good composition where the lines and curves of image elements keep the viewer’s eye inside the frame. Then there’s the content itself and what it might mean to—or how it will be interpreted by—the viewer.
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CO M P O S I T I O N : F R O M S N A P S H O T S T O G R E AT S H O T S