Emily L. Ferguson wrote:
Well, Herschel. I think that there is composition and there is
composition.
On the one hand, that's probably a fairly safe (non-disprovable) claim :-).
On the other hand, I agree. There are *at least* three types -- the
good, the bad, and the ugly.
The rule of thirds is very sensible for a beginning. There's really
nothing wrong with it at all for keeping your average snapper from
getting the top of mom's head cut off and a great shot of her waist.
It's a great boon for that type of shooter, a nice guideline to help
them take pix that are a few steps better than they were before
someone pointed out to them that such a rule existed.
Funny, it's doing rule-of-thirds stuff that has recently been leading to
me cropping more tops of heads and sides of shoulders than I usually have.
(I don't accept it as a "rule" as in "must be done that way", but I
don't think anybody here really thinks it's a requirement, more a useful
rule-of-thumb based on observing what has worked in the past.)
And, in fact, the rule is useful for pros too. It keeps them from
getting excited and setting the shutter release off before they've
thought things through a little further, especially when the AD is
standing nearby and time is running low and the job has gone on too
long anyway.
So I have no quarrel with the rule of thirds.
I'm with you there.
Also for event and news photos there may well not have been *time* to
get too fancy in the composition. I've had a number of cases where the
instant grab shot was all I had to work with because when I took three
seconds to think and recompose the second shot, the subject went away.
But then there is composition. There's the outside-the-box type of
composition. The kind where the object is smack in the center because
there's no other logical place for it, or the object is right at the
rule of thirds intersection but because the photographer chose a
ferociously wide angle lens, or some interesting light angle, the rule
of thirds is not the dominant feature of the image. Or where there is
more than one subject in the photograph but the perspective reveals
that one of them is the more prominent and placing that one at the
rule intersection makes that clear. Clearly some creative process
entered the composing of the image - perhaps the photographer was
riffing on the rule, making a joke, trying to manipulate the concept.
Without the rule there'd be no riff.
I've tried a few times adjusting cropping on event pictures with two
people to put significant bits of each person at one of the 4
thirds-intersection points, and am cautiously pleased with some of the
results. They've caused me to crop less tightly in a number of cases,
which is interesting.
I'm not very good at composition, and even less good at analyzing *why*
something does or doesn't work; but yes, "real" composition is darned
interesting. Is there a book that gives useful analyses of a bunch of
images with not-so-simple composition?
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/dd-b
Pics: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum, http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
