This Thing Called Photo Composition
Photo
Composition is the art of taking a good photo and converting it into an
outstanding photo with a high degree of artistic beauty. This is accomplished by taking numerous things into account while you set up your shot. For some people it's a natural skill but for others it's a learned skill. In my particular case, it took a couple of years to grasp and apply the basics of composing and the finer aspects will likely be a lifelong learning process for me.
But since composition is such an important part of photography, we will now explore the basics and some of the finer points. Expect this part of the blog to expand frequently over the next several months.
Here is a list of the composition topics we'll be discussing:
1 - Framing the Shot
2 - Rule of Thirds
3 - Rule of Offsets
4 - Effective Zoom Level
5 - Including/Excluding
6 - Grooming the Scene
7 - Working Your Subject
8 - Cloning Out Distractions
Framing the Shot
The position
of your subject within the frame is a basic part of composition. There
is a visual art principle known as "Rule of Thirds" which advances the
notion that your subject is more appealing when positioned off center at
imaginary positions 1/3 of the way in and/or up/down from the frame
edges.To help you understand the Rule of Thirds, here's a link to a good article on the topic:
For macro photography, I personally am not a big proponent of the Rule of Thirds. In many cases, since the magnification is high, following the rule would push the subject partially outside the frame. I favor what I call the Rule of Offsets, which simply means that in most cases, I give my subject a small nudge off dead center.
Below are Lily macros. The first one I framed dead center and the second I framed off center but not according to the Rule of Thirds.
I'm not sure
which of the above you find to be the better framing and to be sure, it
varies from one person to another, but my general habit is to frame my
macro subjects with a slight offset from dead center. I feel that it
makes for a more interesting image.
If you haven't
developed the habit of cognizance and you get back home only to
discover a dead center subject you wish you had offset, you can always
use the crop tool in your photo editing software to create an offset.
In the first photo below, I framed the leaf dead center in the snow. In
the second photo, I simply cropped the upper left corner to create an
offset.
When we talk about applying either the Rule of Thirds or the Rule of Offsets to a macro, our subject can be a subject within a subject. For example, the eye of the bee as opposed to the entire bee. So we can then apply the rule only to his eye. Here's an example I found online which demonstrates this principle of a subject within a subject and applying Rule of Thirds.
The above photo was obtained from this website: Rule of Thirds
To Zoom or Not to Zoom
When people
start in macro photography, the tendency is to use a great deal of
magnification. This is understandable. After all, magnification is
what macro is all about.However, a great deal of zoom may not produce the prettiest result. You might be guilty of magnification for the sake of magnification at the expense of composition. So when framing your shot, try many different zoom levels. For example, a Hoverly on a Chicory blossom . . . always a delightful sight, but to be sure, the stamens of the Chicory are just as interesting and pretty as the Hoverfly so a lower zoom level which includes the Hoverfly and some of his Chicory surroundings might be more appealing than filling the frame with only the face of the Hoverfly.
This is not to suggest that high-magnification macros can't be pretty. They can be. But magnification for the sake of magnification to the expense of composition usually produces poor results. Such a photo tends to say "Hey, Look what my camera can do!" more than it says, "Hey, Look how pretty this scene is!"
Below are two images of the same flower. The first is a high magnification image of the stigma and style only. The second image uses less zoom and presents the entire corolla. For my personal liking, the image with less zoom is the more appealing of the two. And of course, since composition is art and since art is subjective, some people might feel that the higher magnification image is the prettier one. In any event, when you use zoom, try to avoid showing off unless it is also artistic and beautiful.
Including/Excluding
When composing
the shot, it isn't sufficient to pay attention to the subject only.
The surroundings may include elements which are better left in or left
out and deciding what to leave in and out also effects the position of
the subject in the frame, and which zoom level to use.So if you're shooting a butterfly on a Zinnia flower and a dead stem is protruding between the petals creating a harsh distraction to the scene, it may become necessary to change camera angles to avoid that distracting element, or change the zoom level to crop it out of the frame. In a case such as this, using your hands to remove the distraction is not possible because you'll scare the butterfly and it may not return, so working the angles and zoom levels to exclude the distraction is the best approach.
Alternately, you might be going for facial closeup of the butterfly but just off to the left is another butterfly who looks fabulous in the bokeh so a decision to include that element by decreasing the zoom level results in the prettiest photo. You'll lose a little magnification in the facial closeup, but you'll gain some striking bokeh of a secondary butterfly subject.
Deciding what to include and what to exclude in the image is an artistic skill. For some of us it doesn't come naturally. If you're one of those people, I have an exercise you can do to help you improve your skills.
Spend time at the various Internet sites for photo hosting such as Flickr and Pinterest where you can scroll through hundreds and thousands of images at a time. Do not focus on any image in particular. Just casually scroll and observe the parade of images passing by your eyes. When you notice one which tends to grab your attention, click on it to enlarge it and analyze why it is instantly appealing to you. By doing this exercise, you will gradually develop knowledge about what constitutes a pretty composition and you can then apply that knowledge to your own images.
Grooming the Scene
I used to be a
purist photographer, never tampering with nature when shooting macros
in the wilds; believing that the chaos of nature was in and of itself
quite beautiful, and that's a fact.But over the years, I've moderated that position and I oftentimes groom the scene to make a prettier photo. If there are strong distractions in the scene, when possible, I will remove them and dress things up a bit.
To demonstrate, the top photo is the busy and cluttered scene surrounding this lovely Sherbet mushroom, and the bottom image is after I groomed the scene and altered the camera angle . Which image is prettier? Well, again, if you're of the purist persuasion, perhaps you'll favor the cluttered natural scene, but if like me, you feel that the objective of the macro is to present the beauty of the subject without too many distractions, then the groomed image will be more appealing.
Working Your Subject
People in the Facebook group are acutely familiar with the following advice: "Work your subject".Whether you're shooting a butterfly, a daffodil, a raindrop . . . no matter what you're shooting, do so from numerous camera angles, zoom levels, and light angles. Tweak and retweak your composition over and over, checking your preview each time to see which tweak gave you which result.
Working your subject means becoming intimately familiar with your subject, its surroundings, the available light, and how it all plays out as you make adjustments to camera angles, zoom levels, and framing changes.
Not only does this practice result in the prettiest possible image at the moment, but it also provides you with experience about how to approach similar subjects in the future, as well as intimate knowledge about how to use your camera for any shot.
A Little About Photo Editing
The
goal of this blog is to help you capture beautiful macros in simple
single shots, using the habit of cognizance to help you avoid the need
for editing. However, photo editing for routine tasks such as minor
crops and adjustments to contrast and color saturation are always quite
helpful.And another editing technique which is quite helpful but often misunderstood is the use of the clone tool to remove distractions which were impossible to remove while at the venue. So, we shall now delve into the art of cloning.
Most photo editing software has some kind of clone tool. The one I use is a freeware called Photo Filtre (Euro spelling for filter), and its clone tool in my estimate is easy to use, has a great deal of adjustment versatility, and is highly effective.
Link to the free download:
Below is an example of the usefulness of the clone tool. In the first image, there is a distracting bit of a leaf at the lower right of the frame and in the second image, it has been whisked away with about 5 seconds of cloning.
Cloning Tutorial Video
This video should help you understand how to use the Photo Filtre clone tool to remove unwanted elements from your images.
This is the end of the Bootcamp blog. Take what you've learned, put it into practice, an d show me your photo excellence!
