Three Dimensions of Photography
This presentation concerns the use of composition and design influences in photography.
We shoot many different styles of photography, from leisurely landscape to prolonged staged still-life setups to street photography requiring lightning-quick reactions; the idea is that, no matter the genre of photography, the results will benefit from conscious analytical techniques at the time a photo is made.
Let’s get light out the way, OK?
It’s a vital parameter, but light is not one of my dimensions to consider today.
Space
Composition is not about the subject, it’s about what we present to other people: the image, bounded by normally four sides of a frame.
Gestalt Psychology
What’s it all about?
Gestalt is the essence or shape of an entity’s complete form.
Photographically, it concerns what the mind perceives when presented with various inputs. We’re used to people commenting on photos, talking about lines and curves and other shapes, in terms of where the eye is drawn to look in the frame.
Gestalt psychology proposes several “rules” or phenomena. Most notably,
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Reification: the tendency to “realise” or “complete” a subject; the classic example is the three circles with segments missing, in which we see a triangle.
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Grouping: the brain sees similar or related objects in close proximity and groups them together – see how the “Loch Ness monster” is identifiable as a thing, despite being close to the triangle
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Multi-stability: when presented with ambiguous images such as the famous Vase/faces illusion, the mind latches on to one way of seeing it and finds it very hard to see it differently.
Other Concepts (1)
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Placement: the choice of where to place the subject in the frame is precise and conveys a strong message: in the middle is static and calm; off-centre is dynamic; right up near a corner or edge of the frame is eccentric and demands justification.
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Geometry: the subjects in a photo can consist of points (very small subjects), lines or areas.
Other Concepts (2)
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Balance is a hard idea to convey: it relies on understanding visual “weight”, such as an identifiable object or area of colour; the idea is that these objects should then be laid out in a pleasing fashion within the frame. (For example, “something” in the bottom-right corner with a further “something” diametrically opposite in the top-left corner.)
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In the early 1900s, in the Bauhaus school of design, Itten proposed a series of contrasts to include in one’s work – for example, light/dark, point/line, thick/thin, much/little, hard/soft, moving/stationary. As an example, a long-exposure photo of a waterfall amongst rocks contains a contrast of hard and stationary (rocks) versus soft and movement (water).
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My own favourite contrast is “old/new”
White Plaster Wall, Clovelly
There’s an obvious primary subject of the doorway, but I like the strong contrasty black/whites, the texture of plaster wall in the sunlight, and the loose placement of windows and date of building on the wall.
Falling to Bits
An example of a dynamic, almost eccentric, composition: the three remaining leafs are almost centred in the image, but the twig curves in strongly from the top-right corner of the frame.
Three Seagulls
By including three birds loosely separated around the centre of the frame, I’ve created a strong sense of a triangle shape between them.
Elegant Maple
The fine, elegant lines are reminiscent of Japanese calligraphy. A minimalist composition: again, it’s all about placement in the frame.
River Shiel
In this case, the River Shiel flows down from the top-right of the frame, forking and forming a Y-shape towards the bottom.
Triangles, Diagonals
Very pronounced lines – diagonal lines and triangles lend a sense of strength, again, splitting up the frame into comparatively simple shapes.
Richmond Roofs
The higgledy-piggledy lines of the roofs lead the eye in a chevron pattern, from the mid-bottom upwards, first right and then left. Having seen it, the eye tends to settle on the blue dead-end road-sign just above the centre of the shot. As a bonus, the road behind the houses traces out a smooth curve along the top of the frame (even if mostly hidden).
Calm Landscape
This is the demonstrate the use of a centred composition; the road to my right contributes a significant visual weight, but, when offset against the hill-outline in the left corner, leaves it balanced, almost pivoting around the centre of the frame. Hence it conveys a sense of calm, “I’d like to walk along that road”.
Echoes of Mountain-ness
This is an example of large/small contrast: “mountain-ness” because the Buachaille Etive Mor is the most obvious epitome of a mountain; an echo, being fainter, corresponds to the smaller boulder in front – which, if you flip it laterally, shares a similar outline to the mountain behind.
Calanais Sunset
A contrast of light and dark: the standing stones at Calanais silhouetted against a colourful sunset.
Beech leaves and buds
Another simple contrast: old leaves, curled up drying out and dying, contrasted with the new buds already growing for next year.
Old and New: Aberdeen
This is a tale of two halves, with a composition split almost straight down the middle; on the left, we see an old ruined brick/stone building, possibly a church (to judge by the shape of the door-frames), contrasting with the right half showing modern Aberdeen life – concrete, shopping centres, people driving away from it all underneath.
Old and New: St Andrews
No fakery involved – I caught the moment of the car passing behind the wall. It contrasts old stone wall and shiny new metalwork.
Bazaar Juxtaposition
I’m still not sure what I like about this but it seems an unlikely conjunction of businesses – a Christian bookshop immediately above a lawyer’s and a bazaar.
Spooky, isn’t it?
It was hallowe’en the week before I presented this, originally; talking of Gestalt psychology and realising / filling-in what’s not quite there… just a stone but it resembles a dead skull submerged in the water, like something out of Lord of the Rings.
Boing
We start with a scene from the Taynuilt Games, 2009; the moment of impact as a thrown heavy weight hits, deforming the bar. A fraction of a second either side would not have had the same effect. The composition was chosen to exclude any reference to the ground, just the metal bar and weight against the sky.
Shooting the Generations
Each level of distance in this photo corresponds directly to an era: in one generation, soldiers went to war; coming forward a step, another generation erects a memorial to them; coming forward another step, youths ride their bike over the memorial and take a photo of it; and finally, coming all the way back, I stand and make a photograph of that, too.
Candid Silhouette
This image was made at Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven. Descending the path down to the entrance, I saw this woman making her way up to a gap in the conglomerate stone to take a photo of her own; seeing the potential, I ran 20 yards to make the photo, deliberately exposed for the sky behind in order to silhouette her and the rocks. An example of moment decisif.
Never.
A simple composition; a road-sign saying no parking at any time', covered in dripping paint even erasing over part of the sign. It doesn't so much convey a sense of time as ofnever’.
Solitary
A simple mood photograph: a woman in the landscape, sitting on a rock above Wastwater in the Lake District, with her head down looking thoughtful, nobody else around. As such, it says `solitary’ loud and clear.
Man of the People
This image, an outgoing priest-in-charge talking to members of his congregation, conveys a sense of involvement, engagement in conversation. I deliberately chose to zoom fairly far-in, focussing only on the priest’s face, with his eyes looking at the chap on the right, letting the frame chop off other people’s heads – also breaking a normal photographic guideline about “not blurring the foreground”.
Awaiting Higher Tides
In this case, the platinum toning is meant to convey a sense of vintage – a boat waiting for tides to float it out to sea again.
Airy Grass
An abstract composition; in the words of Julia Margaret Cameron, “I focussed until it was beautiful”. Not everything needs to be sharp; certainly there is no rule that a photograph must have one sharp subject! So this conveys a sense of light and airiness.
Decaying Willow
This was actually made using a wide-angle pinhole not-lens, hence the overall haziness. Again, the platinum toning conveys a sense of vintage, of age – the old willow tree, battered by storms, gradually falling apart at the seams.
COME ON!
The message here is a cry from the heart: “COME ON!”. Really, does anyone think, in this day and age, that it is acceptable to drop litter? The cold blue toning was chosen, partly because it works well with a silver drinks can, but also because it connotes cold disapproval.
One World
I had the idea for this image, having noticed all the varying patterns of blotchy patches on corroding leaves earlier in the year.
A message of environmentalism, or, to see the world in a small leaf. We only have one world, we need to look out for it and care about each other and the environment more.