A Little News

Maybe the first thing we learn about composition in photo school or in pretty much any photo book is to avoid the bulls eye effect. You know the one where you stick the person right in the middle of the viewfinder and squeeze the shutter release. There are billions of snap shots filling millions of shoe boxes across the world that were composed just this way. Since the advent of AF cameras with their center viewfinder focus rectangle, this compositional disease has probably run rampant.

It may be that composition is the greatest casualty of the AF era. Even pros can fall victim to this because most of us either don’t use or don’t trust those peripheral AF sensors too much and use the center sensor all the time. If you get lazy you can just forget to recompose the image after autofocusing and use the crop tool in Photoshop to clean up your mess later. Yes, this is the voice of experience talking here. Been there, done that.

The great thing about all rules of photography is that they just beg to broken and you can break this rule too. In photo school the instructors drum into your head that you should use the rule of thirds. That’s just great. I love the rule of thirds and I love seeing pictures composed that way. BUT, the rule of thirds is not law. To borrow a phrase from Pirates of the Caribbean, composition rules are more guidelines than actual rules. They are there to give you a good sense of direction. One reason you should learn all the rules of photography is so you can break them creatively! And lets face it, we all like to break the rules.

So, how can you break the rules creatively and go bulls eye on the viewer. Maybe it is best to know when not to first because that will also answer the question of when to at the same time. Basically, you should never, and I really do mean never here, place the subject in the middle of the frame and have nothing going on around them. That is just a poorly done snapshot. So then, it is logical to say that if you should never do it that way that you should always include other things in the frame when you use the bulls eye composition. Put the subject in the center and surround them with something or frame them with something else. In other words, fill the frame with something. A person surrounded by nothing is just boring.

Now that begs another question. How do you handle a subject with very little else in the frame? That is when you can use the rule of thirds to your advantage. You can compose off center and then allow the person to fall on one of the thirds and you instantly transform a fairly empty frame into an interesting composition. This is also a very useful technique when you want to establish a foreground/background relationship between your subject and its surroundings. No matter whether you place your subject in a dominant foreground position or a more subservient background position, the use of the rule of thirds will help you maintain visual interest.

As is often true with photography, you can do all the studying you want to but the best learning experience will be had with the camera in your hand out there making pictures. Make mistakes; learn from them. Make some nice images and enjoy them. Most of all, get out there and compose!

About the photos: The first photo is of a little boy I shot last year who aspires to be a rodeo cowboy. This was done with a Nikon D2Hs and a 17-35mm lens. The light is from a single SB800 on a light stand to camera right. I used the rule of thirds style composition and a low angle to emphasize the cloudy sky which really helps the basically empty frame. Contest judges have really liked this photo. It has won a couple of awards in our annual state photo contests so the composition has passed that test. The other photo is of a little girl I saw waiting to greet troops returning from Iraq at an aviation terminal at the Huntsville International Airport. It is a classic bulls eye composition done with a Nikon D2H and an 80-200mm lens. The flags help fill out the frame and prevent the picture from losing compositional interest immediately.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.