Thoughts on composition, learning from Ansel Adams

[Mark Sawyer]

...I have almost no familiarity with the work of artist-photographers whose native language reads either right to left or top to bottom.

Mind you, photographers using a view camera compose upside down.

[Jac@stafford.net]

I would guess that this 'reads left-to-right'.

http://www.digoliardi.net/another-another-becky.jpg

[Ulophot]

I would guess that this 'reads left-to-right'.

http://www.digoliardi.net/another-another-becky.jpg

Touché, Jac.

[Ken Lee]

The first part of my music lessons covered theory and technical exercises - which were very important.

After some time the teacher would say: "OK, enough of that. Let's play music." Then we would deal with interpretation, expression, feeling.

There's no end to either study. They complement one another.

[faberryman]

Look like arbitrarily placed lines to me. The image is such that you could place them almost anywhere.

[Sean Mac]

William Mortensen, by way of contrast, made his thinking known in "The Command to Look". It's an entertaining read if nothing else.

The arrival of the camera affected the painters sensibilities too. There are Impressionist paintings with figures only partially within the frame. Edgar Degas was known to take photographs using gaslight.

After two years formal study of painting and drawing my favourite take on the subject is from Mark Carder of drawmixpaint.com.

"For every Rule of Composition there's a great painting that breaks that Rule"

[Ulophot]

Maris, I hope my poor writing conveyed some hint, at least, of my agreement with your, shall we say, deep skepticism of formal analysis. Perhaps I failed to communicate my intention well. In any case, it is somewhat intriguing to me that an artist of your caliber finds the thirds, or fifths, a valuable referent. Yet what you say about being able to run through the lot of "constructive" devices trumps reliance on one or two. Your composition is fluid and surely more intuitive than reference to the thirds or other "rules" might seem to imply. Regarding your image above, perhaps I see its composition very differently from your view of it.

We live, I believe, in a universe that is a unity because of principles which we may discover and comprehend increasingly clearly over time. whether we explore the language of music or visual art, we find form. How we understand it, and thus employ it, touches on what I sought to convey in my original post, taking a single principle as one worthy of examination. I did not mean to suggest that the rectangle has no lawful "internal" ordering principle. My argument is with the nature of the imposition of "Euclidean" forms substituting for, or in contradiction to, the creative act of composing. As you put it, "how it is laid out rather than what's it of."

Best, Philip

[cowanw]

I really liked Arthur Wesley Dow's "Composition" book better than formulaic basic photography instruction as it was about harmony of shapes and tones. I am not certain, but suspect it was a popular teaching book for photographer's of AA's period.

This book was a standard text for White's school, had a strong Oriental influence and was a strong influence on Modernism. Through memory and experience Maris's mind is able to assess a scene and develop an approach to an image that he thinks might work. Without your camera, spend you whole day looking at everything with those rules/ guidelines/ principles in mind of thirds, fifths, Golden Ratios, symmetries, repoussoirs, diagonals, leading lines, framing
Mortensen is a good and relevant read as well. You can always try the reverse of the above, but the failures will be greater and the occasional reward will be greater. Eventually you will learn what you like.

this application can help you put pictures in for assessment and quickly learn what makes sense and what is a bit out there
http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/photo-adjuster.html

[Pere Casals]

Mind you, photographers using a view camera compose upside down.

Some also compose by directly looking at the scene, and perhaps using hands to help to realize the framing.

Anyway (IMHO) viewing the image upside down may help to analyze better the composition, because the subject itself distracts less in that analysis, I guess.

[Alan Klein]

If it looks and feels good to your brain, then you're following the rules of composition.