Icons Used in This Book
Icons are a beloved tradition in the For Dummies series, so why buck tradition now? I use the following icons to direct your eye to specific types of information within the book:
The text that appears next to this icon presents the information that you'll rely on again and again when photographing. This is the stuff that experienced photographers know cold.
In some instances, I dive a little further into a technical topic to give you greater detail that you may find interesting. You're welcome to skip these divergences; you won't miss anything crucial.
Whenever I give you information that saves you time, money, or photographic frustration, I mark the text with this icon.
Some practices send your composition into a tailspin that even postproduction editing can't fix. Whenever I tell you about possible errors or missteps, I highlight the information with this dangerous-looking icon.
Where to Go from Here
As I mention earlier, you don't have to read this book in any particular order — the way you proceed is totally up to you. You can simply pick a topic that you're interested in and dig in. For instance, if you're antsy to start applying your photographic skills to shooting landscapes or another specific subject, flip right to Part IV. If color has you baffled, Chapter 6 has the information you need. Need an introduction to or refresher on camera settings? Head for Chapter 3. And if you're a beginner, an overachiever, or someone who just can't stand the thought of missing something, turn the page and keep reading until you hit the index. Whatever you do, don't delay. Get started on your journey toward successfully composed images.
In this part. he difference between good photography and mediocre photography is composition. Until you grasp the ideas behind successful compositions, your photography can go only so far. This part alerts you to exactly what composition is, why it's so critical for making images, and what skills and equipment you need to begin creating knockout compositions.
Chapter 1. Photographic Composition: The Overview
In This Chapter
Reviewing photographic composition
Developing the skills that lead to great compositions
The world is full of beauty, and the world of photography is full of limitless m potential to reveal that beauty. Any particular scene or scenario can be conveyed in countless ways that are equally compelling, and each photographer chooses a composition based on her own unique values and ideas. What a viewer takes from your photographs — how he understands your message — depends mainly on your ability to compose clear and interesting images. Every time you take a photograph, you're communicating with whoever looks at it, and getting your message across has a lot to do with your fluency in the language of photography.
Some people say that great photographs can be captured with even the cheapest point-and-shoot cameras and that photography is all about the photographer's eye, not the equipment or technique used. This thought is true on certain levels of standards, but why would you stop at just having a good eye? Photography and composition is about more than just pointing your camera at something that looks interesting. Discovering how to take your good eye to the next level and back it up with a thorough understanding of the equipment and techniques available advances the quality of your photography to much more impressive levels.
In this chapter, I give you an overview of what role composition takes in photography and show you what techniques you can use to improve your images' compositions.
Getting a Grasp on Good Composition
Artists of all types (photographers, painters, architects, musicians, and so on) know that a noticeable difference exists between good composition and poor composition. A viewer may not be educated in photographic composition, but she knows a good photo when she sees it. Similarly, you don't need to understand music theory to differentiate between a good song and a bad song. However, you're more likely to compose a good song if you understand the theory behind the music.
Understanding what photographic composition is and how it conveys a message to viewers changes the way you take pictures and increases your enjoyment in viewing the work of other photographers.
defining photographic composition
In general, the term composition refers to how various parts come together to create a harmonious whole. When something — whether it's a photograph, a painting, a room, or any other object — contains multiple elements, those elements automatically develop relationships to one another. For example, where you position the sofa and chairs determines how those items work together (and whether your guests can talk to each other).
More specifically, photographic composition represents the decisions you make when creating an image. It includes everything that's in your frame — the rectangular space that's represented by your camera's viewfinder or your photograph. In a photograph, the way you reveal the relationships between the different elements in your scene makes up your composition.
The following terms are essential to understanding what makes up a scene and what your selected composition represents:
• Frame: Your frame is the rectangle or square (depending on your camera's format) that contains the scene you're shooting. You can't always manipulate a scene, but you can control how the scene is represented in your frame if you're properly prepared. Being prepared means knowing which camera angles provide the best results in a given scenario (Chapter 8) and knowing how to use your equipment to get the best results with regard to focus (Chapter 7), exposure (Chapter 3), and arrangement (Chapter 5).
• Elements: The elements of a composition are the people, places, and things that make up a scene. Everything included in your frame is an element, including the subject, the details that make up the foreground and background, and any objects, props, or details that surround the subject. In fact, compositional elements consist of anything that can be defined in an image: shapes, forms, lines, textures, colors, tonalities, light (or the absence of light), and space. The arrangement of a scene's elements in your frame determines your composition.
• Subject: The subject is a person, place, thing, or essence (in abstract images) that gives a photograph purpose. Because an image tells a story about its subject, the goal of a good composition is to showcase the subject. Keep in mind that one photograph can include multiple subjects.
Notice the elements that make up the scene in Figure 1–1 — the snowcapped mountains, the valley with a river running through it, the body of water that the river feeds into, and the cloudy and hazy sky. The mountain on the left side of the frame is the subject in this image.
35mm, 1/250 sec, fill, 320
Figure 1–1: Consider what each element in your frame says about your subject when deciding to incorporate itor eliminate it.
Because of the composition I chose for Figure 1–1, the mountain on the left-hand side dominates all the other elements in the scene; those elements exist in the frame to tell you more about the mountain itself — that it's in a cold climate, it's massive, and it exists in dramatic weather conditions. The various elements in this scene relate to the subject as follows: