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Thread: Composition training and resources?

  1. #11

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    You can start with Dow's "Composition." You can get a free e-book from it in google books, or read it there as well.


    http://books.google.com/books?id=uL0...page&q&f=false

  2. #12
    C. D. Keth's Avatar
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    Squint so your vision blurs. Does your picture still look interesting?
    -Chris

  3. #13

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Greg Miller View Post
    Assuming the camera was in the right place, at the right height, with the right focal length lens, with the right depth of field, at the right time of day, in the right season, when the sun is coming from the right direction, in the right weather conditions.
    No intention to pick on you Greg, but I don't think those conditions ever existed. Another shooter commented to me that it was "all about the shot". I disagreed with him. I said, "there is no shot." There is only you and this photographic object you are creating.

    IMO, the only way to do well in composing is to internalize enough about it that you forget it all. There are a lot of books that talk about composing, but I find reading them tedious, to be polite. As bad as curators. Rule of thirds, rules of this or that, won't help you to connect deeply with one's subject, which is what this is about in the first place.

    That said, I would agree with Struan that Japanese woodcuts have had a very positive influence on photography. If you look for design in photography, you will find it. The Photo Secession was a very rich time with respect to design. I'd start there.... I have a wonderful book about Weston and Mather that has some beautiful images in it...

    I will offer two suggestions. 1) Almost never stick something in the center of the frame. My Dad rejected a job for Nat'l Geo in the 50's as he didn't want to be part of what he considered the "stick something red in the center of the frame" tradition. That was then.... Sticking something in the center often indicates that you have seen a "thing" that impresses you somewhat. There are no things, nothing exists in of itself, everything exists within the context of its surroundings (multiple contexts of course). The tree is bent over because a rock is keeping it from the water on one side, for example. There is design everywhere. Centering can imply that you have no relationship with your subject. It is a tool to be used very sparingly.

    2) Take your photograph. Then pick up the tripod and walk forward a few steps and try again. Leave out the stuff you don't need. Do it again. What did you understand that made you want to stop? Refine, refine, refine.

    The photography that interests me is all about relationship. When you connect with something, without all the extras, then it allows me to connect to it as well. The deeper/clearer you have seen, the deeper I can go. I don't want to be impressed, I want to be moved.

    Hope this helps.


    Lenny
    EigerStudios
    Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

  4. #14
    ROL's Avatar
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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Greg Miller View Post
    Assuming the camera was in the right place, at the right height, with the right focal length lens, with the right depth of field, at the right time of day, in the right season, when the sun is coming from the right direction, in the right weather conditions.
    I don't get your point. Although cropping still demands compositional skills, is an available option when any of the factors you list conspire against one's best aesthetic efforts, as is often the case in natural light and environments (so stated in the link).

  5. #15

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lenny Eiger View Post
    No intention to pick on you Greg, but I don't think those conditions ever existed. Another shooter commented to me that it was "all about the shot". I disagreed with him. I said, "there is no shot." There is only you and this photographic object you are creating.
    You've never put the camera in the right place and used the right lens in the right light? I work hard to find subjects and make plans to be there when the conditions are optimal. It's hard work, but it happens. If any of those conditions aren't right, then I'm not happy, andI keep trying until it happens..

  6. #16

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by ROL View Post
    I don't get your point. Although cropping still demands compositional skills, is an available option when any of the factors you list conspire against one's best aesthetic efforts, as is often the case in natural light and environments (so stated in the link).
    Much of composition is about image design. Creati8ng a composition with the right details arranged in a way that guides the viewer though the image. If the light is wrong, or the wrong lens is used, or the camera is in the wrong place, then cropping usually isn't going to help. Can cropping help? Certainly in some circumstances. But everything else has to be right in order for that to be the case. Most of the poor images that I see have a lot more wrong in terms of composition than cropping.

  7. #17

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    I plan the crop when I shoot. For me, the subject dictates the composition and the aspect ratio of the final print. I think it is pretentious and "uncompositional" to feel bound by the aspect ratio of your film. Cropping for me is not "saving" an otherwise badly-composed image, it is an essential part of the composition.

    As for composition tips: I learned more in art history classes and from viewing great art than I ever did reading books about photography. Look for resources about how painters organized their canvasses, and how that developed through history. There is a whole lot more written about the last ten centuries of painting than about the last (less than) 200 years of photography...

    Absorb all this, stand on the shoulders of the giants of the past and then create something of your own. It is nice to know about ancient Greek ideas of symmetry, or Medieval correlations of size to importance, or experimenting with point-of-view a lá Canaletto, or drawing attention to a point in the composition with leading lines, etc., etc., the list is endless. It is just as important to know how to deny all that.

    Best,

    Doremus

  8. #18
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    I'm kinda with Brett Weston on this one. You're either born with it or you're not. But I do
    think a lot of photographers are borderline and just need to be coaxed a little. Think of the
    groundglass as an actual picture frame, and whether or not what you see there is actually
    worth printing and framing. Otherwise, I think it helps to view the work of others in fine art
    books and museums etc - not that you need to copy them, but as a general concept of quality. Most how-to manuals are written by visual illiterates who use routinely use stupid
    cliches. And above all, print, print, print, until something really clicks.

  9. #19

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Greg Miller View Post
    You've never put the camera in the right place and used the right lens in the right light? I work hard to find subjects and make plans to be there when the conditions are optimal. It's hard work, but it happens. If any of those conditions aren't right, then I'm not happy, andI keep trying until it happens..
    This may be an issue of semantics. One of my mentors, Phil Perkis, used to ask, "at the end of the day, do you haver any wisdom to share with the rest of us?" For me, I am successful when I have understood something, and even more so when I understand something that is universal, or at least universal to humans. I don't know this until I print it, of course, but I can feel whether I am connected when I am in the field.

    Design is important to keep from boring everyone, but the placement of the camera or the lens is not an important part of the final image. Often times it would not have mattered where I placed the camera, it is the "seeing" that mattered. Light is important, of course, but it is to notice and understand the light, light as a subject, rather than to pick only the dawn light, for example.

    I am very jealous that you get to be at Olana. I went to college at Bard, went all over the area, climbed in the Gunks, and I think the Hudson River Valley is one spectacular area of natural beauty. I miss it.

    Best,

    Lenny
    EigerStudios
    Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

  10. #20

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    Re: Composition training and resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    I'm kinda with Brett Weston on this one. You're either born with it or you're not.
    I agree with the rest of this post, but these sentences don't ring true for me...

    I think I was born with it. My father was a photographer and I was in the darkroom helping out when I was quite young, 7-9 years old. I did the high school yearbook. After running around for a number of years here and there I finally went back to photography school at Pratt. I remember my first class indelibly. The teacher gave us an assignment and when I presented mine, she told me to "never bring that crap into my class again". It was a shock, I had thought I was pretty cool, after all, I had all this experience. However, she was right. There was no thought behind what I had done at all. She could have had a bit more tact, to say the least.

    I stayed and studied. I learned about the history, I learned how to speak about aesthetics, describe what I was trying to accomplish, and measure whether I had. I had a language, and a context for my work. It has been invaluable to me.

    There is a famous teacher, who can remain nameless, who used to simply say "Behold" and let the work speak for itself. I know this only second hand, so I don't know if he ever said anything else. If he didn't, this would be quite unfortunate for his students. As an artist, it is important to study, to know what you are doing. You have to have a foundation, and a genre in which you live and breathe. I won't say everyone has to go to a school, atho' it was great for me, but I don't think it is quite so haphazard as Brett's comment would make it.

    I prefer to quote Bill Irwin, one of the great clowns of all time, "There is no Art without History". Or Marina Heredia, a well-known flamenco singer, "You can't build a house from the roof down. You need foundations to know what you are doing."

    Lenny
    EigerStudios
    Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing

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