Composition & Rhythm Of An Image: A Photographer's Assets

Hello guys,

It has been a bit more than a year since I last posted an article. First, I want to thank all of you for continuing to read my posts. In this article, we will dive into and recap Composition, Framing, Rhythm and Balance of an image. Luckily, I was introduced to this at a very young age by my father who was an artist: He taught me the basics of composition rules ever since I was a kid. For those not already familiar with these concepts, I'd like to discuss a few simple rules that might make you consider why some images are more eye catching than others. I will draw from a few examples and images I took that were published in Vogue Italia.

Attention Gold!

First, let′s agree on the main goal: Keep the viewer′s attention on our images as long as possible right ? Of course, attention is the gold of our era. We don't want to let our viewers go away so easily. In order to achieve this, we have to make sure our images carry forward the visual rules around Framing, Rhythm and Balance.

As mentioned above, let's call these rules the Photographer′s Assets. For those who have never heard about this, I would strongly recommend checking out Gestalt laws and Wassily Kandinsky′s, "Point and Line to Plane".

Whenever you have a camera in your hands, there are plenty of ways to get a spot point. A spot point is known as the center of where attention should land, in other words, the most relevant area of the picture or whatever it is you want to highlight or communicate. The first step in how to determine the relevant area or spot point is by making a simple "Zone Division" (to create two well defined areas). We will refer to this areas as The Area of Interest and The Secondary Area or Area of "Non" Interest. Whenever you can recognize these, you will work on trying to make the Area of Interest as clear and legible as possible, while the Area of Non Interest should fade away from the sight and only exist to support the first.

In order to identify these two areas, you will use your Photographer′s Assets which will help you to drive your viewers eye into a well balanced image and let the viewer loose in a visual labyrinth.

Let′s list some of these Photographer′s Assets:

Selective Focus or Depth of Field Control

Easy .. you′ll keep a sharp focus on the main subject of the scene and let the rest lose importance through the lack of sharpness. For this it is always good to use a full open aperture, for example f 1.2 or f 1.4. By doing that, you will easily define these two very well contrasted areas Area of Interest and Secondary Area or Area of "Non" Interest. However, this doesn't mean that the Secondary Area or Area of "Non" Interest has to be totally dead. Indeed the more texture, colors or Bokeh on the Secondary Area you get, the better. That will make your images even richer and more attractive.

In this image, the main subject is pretty clear, I am using the Depth of Field to tell the story of two pilots setting up controls and not to describe the aircraft nor the comfort on it′s interiors. Also here the Secondary Area is in shade, but that′s the next asset.

Light & Shadow

Natural light environments have many pros and many cons. For instance, let′s say you have a very contrasted light area and a shaded one. This is not always bad, you can highlight whatever it is relevant for you and bury in the shadow whatever it is not.

This image was shot with a strobe light mimicking a window source in order to get the feeling of darkness surrounding him and to highlight the Boxer′s fist and part of his face. For this, a pretty handy aperture is f 11 up to f 13.

Color

What to say .. it is always difficult to decide if the image would pay off either in Color or Black and White. Some images works both ways, and Color will not always enhance your image.

I recently bumped into a very nice setup when my model showed me a swimsuit full of colors. Some of the colors matched the sky's color and the surrounding environment. A very sharp eye would be aware of how the Color Palette works in terms of Warm Colors and Cold Colors or Complementary Colors and Opposite Colors. Again, I was lucky because I had the opportunity to study these from a young age. I was even once, forced to paint a Chromatic Circle by hand using acrylic paint in my artistic orientated high school!

In this particular example, the Cold Color is the Light Blue of the sky, while the warmest are the colors of her skin and swimsuit. This gave me two well contrasted areas that helped me to separate the model from the background. For me it was only a matter of framing the model in the correct position to highlight how colorful the full setup was. The full image composition is like a pyramid structure. By tilting the camera a bit, she looks to us from above giving a feeling of importance.

Note: There are plenty of Color Theory books out there. The last one I read was Bride M. Whelan′s, "Color Harmony". It's not a bad idea to check it out.

Framing

Very controversial topic as well, again, I would recommend reading Gestalt laws. This might help you to understand a few things about how the human brain decodes an image by directly affecting psychological triggers. What you can be sure of is that to set up the main subject at the center of the image is not always appealing or the best thing to do in order to catch your viewer's attention. Here for example the subject is placed at the very bottom of the scene with a very exaggerated empty space on top. This has a reason, Disruption.

The framing here plays an important role. While the figure seems to be lost in her thoughts, the exagerated empty space above her head gives us a feeling of an overwhelmingly heavy space which completes the concept itself. Again, this "Non" Interesting Area works as a secondary character in the image. Anyhow, you will notice it is not totally empty, there is a interesting texture filling up the empty space. Texture that has less contrast than the main subject and together they complement each other in a non "balanced" framing.

This consideration mentioned above as the Photographer′s Assets will help you to achieve the goal of keeping the viewer gazing at your image for longer. Of course, most of these are unconscious methods that we hardly notice when reading an image or at the time of shooting, but once you get more conscious of Composition, Framing, Rhythm and Balance, you will realize the impact that they have on your final result and you will perhaps begin to consciously search for these techniques and use them more often.

To summarize, let's say that the important thing is to define two areas, Area of Interest and Secondary Area or Area of "Non" Interest. While the first should be as clean as possible the second one will help to bring out the first precisely by serving as its' complement. In this way the defined areas will work together giving the balance that your images may require to stand out and draw in the viewer for a length of time.

So remember always use your Photographer′s Assets and let always the Secondary Area out of focus, behind a shade, out of the frame (totally or partially) as well as a mix of all of the above mentioned. A non successful image is flat, confused, messy and not clear. The viewer would have a hard time trying to find the main subject of the scene, where to look at and for sure will not spend too much time trying to decode whatever we were trying to communicate.

Before I finish, I would like to thank on my Dad′s memory who put me on this journey and my amazing friends Juan Martin Cucurulo, Jim Moore, Nick Saward, Andreas Unterweger, and Sonia Singh for their unconditional support and their great help on curate this article.

Hope this article helped you guys and feel free to drop me a line in case you need extra help. Have a good one!

Gabriel Matula.