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Grab
The Eye:
Composition Techniques For Your Travel Images
by Michael and Allison Goldstein
Part 2
Diagonal
lines in compositions make dynamic photographs. Look for strips of
different-colored crops in a field, piled bolts of colored fabric, or hats in
a stack. Avoid straight lines that parallel the frame by tilting the camera.
The results will shake up your audience! “Selective
focus” is a technique often seen on television shows in which two people, at
different distances from the camera, are talking together. Only the person
speaking is in focus, and the focus changes to the other person when the
conversation shifts. You can draw attention to your subject in the same way,
by using an open aperture (low f-stop number). Confusing and busy backgrounds
can be eliminated from your composition. The wonderful colors of autumn can
become a soft sweep of pastel hues. Using
reflections in your pictures can be an effective trick of composition. Often,
you can use only the reflection, which makes your photograph more interesting.
Sherman Hines, a well-known Canadian photographer, has been known to literally
carry a puddle in his camera bag. He
watches for situations where there is a pool of water in front of a building
he wants to photograph. He gets down to the water-surface level (worm’s eye
view), and captures the entire building reflected in the water. Another great
shot--at the cost of muddy knees. Silhouettes
are always effective. These are most easily accomplished at sunset or sunrise,
but can also be done on bright days with backlit subjects (at the beach or on
a ski slope). Try underexposing by a stop or so to remove detail. You
can often fill the frame with your subject alone, eliminating extraneous
detail. (This gimmick is often combined with the bird’s eye view.) Use of
wide-angle lenses or telephoto lenses makes it easy. Get closer, then, get
closer still. Imaginative
use of color often results in good compositions.
Watch for chances to use complimentary colors, such as a red canoe
against a background of green forest, or an orange maple tree against a solid
blue sky. Then, explore the idea
of repetitive colors, where the hatband and t-shirt of a pretty girl’s
summer outfit might match the color of the boat she’s rowing. A soccer
player’s team sweater might pick up the color of the fall trees in the
background, or his teammate’s sweater as he stands out-of-focus behind him.
Remember that good photographers make images.
If you find the girl, and you know where a similarly hued boat might
be, combine those picture elements. In
Victoria, on Vancouver Island, Allison once borrowed an orange t-shirt from a
clothing store for ten minutes, so we could make a photograph using this
technique. We sent some of the resulting slides to the store, as promised, and
they were used in an advertising brochure. This image, made at the Kenney Lodge in Ontario's
Rideau Waterway, uses the colors of autumn, reflected in the water, as
a background for the chairs in the foreground.
The reds and yellows in the background are picked up by the red
and yellow chairs on the dock. This very subtle use of color in
composition requires a very observant eye, an easy job for any lady
accustomed to picking out accents for her ensemble. My only claim to
fame for this image was to choose a telephoto lens for the job,
Allison explaining to me very carefully exactly how she wished me to
make the image.
To study these ideas, look at photographic books and visit art
galleries. For each picture that captures your eye, try to analyze exactly why
that image works. What technique(s) of composition were used?
Use of these techniques of composition, particularly in combination,
will greatly enhance your photographs. Eventually, you’ll be able to throw
away this list, once your eye is trained to take advantage of each
opportunity. Apogee Photo and Apogee Photo Magazine are
trademarks of Apogee Photo, Inc. Copyright © 1995-2010
. Apogee Photo, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
This photograph, made on Assateague Island in
Virginia's barrier islands, illustrates the technique of using limited
"depth of field" to emphasize a main subject. The biker is
in sharp focus, while the background is soft. The far edge of the bike
path is the "horizon" in this picture, and the biker is
breaking that horizon. This shot also shows the advantage of using
back lighting, and the good luck that photographers sometimes enjoy -
I didn't use flash fill, and still got a good exposure.
You've got it - it's the Toronto skyline,
shot at dusk from the Polson Street vantage point, a favourite for
local shutterbugs. When I made this shot, the parking lot at the end
of the street was empty of cars, and full of water, after a
thunderstorm had passed. I was literally lying in the water, peering
through the viewfinder, with my tripod as low as it could go. Sherman
Hines was right - the entire skyline was reflected in the puddle!
I photographed this "remuda"
early one misty morning in Glacier National Park, in Montana. It was a
real grab shot, as I just happened to turn around as the horses came
over my skyline. No need to 'break the horizon' here ... the subject
was on top of it! It's perhaps my best silhouette shot ever. In the
days before Photoshop, I put the color in the sky by sandwiching the
original with some red and yellow film. I even won a "millennium
photo contest" with it, calling it "Y2K-Compatible Public
Transportation".
Contrary to popular opinion, I found this
collapsed old bucket as is, and did not fill it with lobster floats.
Photographed in Seal Cove on New Brunswick's Grand Manan Island, it
filled my frame nicely, using a 24mm lens. The curving lines of the
outer perimeter of the bucket make a nice frame around the floats,
lending the composition to the use of a wide- angle lens. A fish-eye
lens, used here, would have yielded a very special image.
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