Composition
You are standing in front of a canvas. In your mind’s eye is a feeling, an idea, or an emotion. How do you show it?
For millennia, artists have pondered this question. Ultimately, every artist must find their own solutions, but there are many techniques that have been developed to facilitate this work.
It all begins with directing the eyes of the audience.
After all, you are controlling an emotional experience, and if the audience doesn’t know where to look, they are not going to experience the image as you intend.
To do this, you need an understanding of how to arrange visual elements within a frame. In other words, you need to understand composition, or the arrangement of elements in the frame.
Look at the following images and ask yourself where your eye goes.
Directing the eyes of the audience is done consciously to manipulate the emotional response.
But how is it done?
An emotionally strong composition starts with building tension. The primary way to do this is to use contrast within the frame, specifically, juxtaposing opposing visual elements.
This might involve color, light, size, distance from the camera, focus, and/or placement. Any element in your frame can be used to create contrast by juxtaposing it against its opposing element.
Look at this simple image again. How is contrast being used?
Every object in your frame has a certain importance, a certain visual weight. The distribution of this weight directly affects the tension in the frame and where the audience looks. In the example above, what gives the geranium flower its weight? Is it the shape? The color? The placement in the frame?
Let’s not forget that the frame is flat and that we are working in two-dimensional space. Let’s also not forget that we are looking to create an illusion of depth with our images, or a three-dimensional space.
To help us arrange objects in that two-dimensional space and create the illusion of depth, let’s employ a couple of useful tools borrowed from the art world:
- rule of thirds
- perspective
Rule of Thirds
Let’s start by dividing the frame into equal thirds, both horizontally and vertically.
Notice how important elements of the frame line up along the horizontal and vertical lines or sit squarely where they intersect.
Aligning objects along these lines, or where they intersect, is known as the rule of thirds and is extremely useful in creating visually powerful shots.
The rule of thirds helps create a sense of balance in your images. It generates tension between opposing areas in the frame.
Let’s also not forget that we are looking to create an illusion of depth with our images, a three-dimensional space.
Perspective
Specifically in art, this is a drawing method that creates depth by manipulating the appearance of objects based on their distance from the viewer.
This illusion of depth revolves around the idea of a vanishing point, which is the point on the horizon toward which everything recedes. As objects get closer to the vanishing point, the way they look changes and mimics how we perceive things in a three-dimensional world.
Certain visual cues, known as depth cues, let us understand how far an object is from us.
A good guide for thinking through depth cues is to consider the three axes of any three-dimensional object: the x-axis, the y-axis, and the z-axis.
It is the z-axis that provides the basis for all perceived depth.
Do you remember your visual planes?
- foreground
- midground
- background
Many depth cues relate directly to how the image changes based on its placement along the z-axis (in other words, on which visual plane it is located).
By examining some of these cues, you can utilize them in your work.
Armed with a solid understanding of composition and how it affects the audience’s experience of an image, experiment with your own shots.
As always, make sure you know what you want to say. This will help you have a better understanding of where to place the camera, what to include in the frame, and how to use your composition to accomplish your emotional goals.
Above all, have fun exploring.
No matter whether you are doing this through color separation, light and shadow, or the placement of visual components, the tension you generate will make your audience feel.
The trick is to make them feel what you intend.
