Composition

Spend 20 minutes in front of a piece of art. Record what you see.

Wendy was one of my most favorite professions in college, if not in my entire school career. She saw things and analyzed them in a way no one else could. She made sense of a painting where it would come alive on the overhead projector. I wanted to be like Wendy. On one of our many museum field trips Wendy gave us one assignment. Spend 20 minutes in front of a piece of art. Record what you see. At the time I'm thinking, 20 minutes. Really? I'm going to fall asleep. We were to take notes and turn in a paper on the painting we had chosen at the following class. It turned out to be the most rewarding 20 minutes of the day.

Composition. It's a tricky thing to get correct. Composition lends ways to a whole ton of rules, some of which may even be better when broken. Regardless, it plays a very strong element in your overall image. Composition helps tell the story, it engages your viewer and it can make make your image comfortable or uncomfortable. I'll show you...

Take this image for example. If there is a face in your photograph that is the first thing your eye will be drawn to. So, for the image below you start looking at the brides face. She is also the lightest part of the image so between those two elements - eyes and lightest area - you eye starts at the brides face. For a composition to be "comfortable" or pleasing to the viewer you want to have the composition move in a circular manner. Basically, You never want the eye to become bored.



Here is the composition broken down:
1. This is where your eye begins, at the head of the subject. NOTE: your eyes always move the direction the subject is looking. Brides eyes, to grooms eyes, to grooms hand.
2. Your eye rests on the groom's hand. The leading lines in this image - the arms - direct your eye where to go next. This continues is the curve of the circle.
3. The brides elbow stops your eye from falling off the page and directs it upwards toward the head of the bride to completing the circle. And repeat... that's what makes the cycle comfortable and never boring.



Okay. Now Spend 20 minutes in front of a piece of art. Record what you see.... J/K! You don't have to but I do challenge you to look at this image again and your own images to see what it is that makes them interesting and engaging to your viewer, client, or yourself.