Cany143 Loc: SE Utah

For the most part, I shoot what most would consider landscapes. My approach is typically on foot. Around me may be heat or cold, wind or calm, the scent of sage or the hint of ozone before a thunderstorm. There'll be light or dark, and always, there'll be the shapes and forms of the living and the non-living. These are the things my senses tell me, and these are the things I feel.

Paraphrasing Weston, 'nature composes far better than man.' Paraphrasing whichever sculptor first said it, 'the figure was always in the stone; I merely released it.' I do not ruminate on these while I'm where I am. Nor do I thumb through some metaphorical mental rolodex of academic and non-academic learnings or leanings that, if pressed --long after the fact--, I couldn't accurately quote, but remember nonetheless. I'm not entirely sure if it isn't simply muscle-memory or it is my Westerner's version of Zen. Either way, being composed, I compose.

Though most of what I shoot would be called landscapes, the scape of land is not what I've shot. They're a culmination of.... my life so far.

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rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

The rules of composition are more for photographers who lack artistic instinct. And for art critics/analysts to explain why a particular composition works.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

I've been studying composition all my photographic life. Somehow, even as a kid, I was told and understood it is an important element in making good images. So...when I finally got a job in a studio as a gopher/apprentice, I asked my first boss and mentor to "teach" me composition and his answer was, "If it looks good, shoot it"! Big help!

I was always interested in learning from the masters so, over the years, I made it my business to attend many workshops, seminars, and classes on composition and many other aspects of photography. Problem was, many of these accomplished photographers/teachers tended to trivialize rules, theories, and "nuts and bolts" approach to many artistic elements. I suppose many of them assumed since they had high levels of possibly inborn talent, years of experience, and training, that EVERYBODY is just like them OR they just wanted to keep their cards close to the chest and not reveal any helpful formulas. For some, maybe it was beneath their dignity- who knows? Many also trivialized equipment choices- "You could do this with a Brownie Hawkeye" if you have the eye", they would pontificate, yet they all had top-of-the-line equipment! Perhas my first boss was right, "if it looks good, just shoot it"!

OK- I lived with that- my client was happy with what they called my "staging" or "centring" although not every subject was "centred", until one day my circumstances changed. I was in a position where I had to teach and train photographers for my business and also to present seminars in order to earn certain credentials with my professional association. I soon found out at a late date, not ever having any pedagogical training, that fledgling photographers, regardless of the level of intrinsic talent, LIKE definitive instruction and answers to the questions.
Yup!- the wat charts, graphs, diagrams, overlay in ther viewing screens, PICTURES, rules and tools!

At one point in time, I had to get back into the textbooks and begin to explain the mathematics and geometry of compositions and discuss things like the Euclid Elements, Divine Proportions, the Golden Rule, Section, and Mean,
The Fibonacci Sequence, Dynamic lines, and more. Also, colour, light, space, and direction also influence the composition.

Some folks feel that there should be no "rules" in art. If you look at their fine work you might realize that they are following some of the rules or coming by them naturally. Some folks have the so-called "eye" and use it almost autonomically. Some others have the "eye" but it has to be developed and refined. Some have, frankly, no intrinsic visual talent, but can and will follow "rules" and formulas and come up with some decent photography. Some creatively inclined folks like to intentionally break the "rules" but in my experience, the BEST rule breakers know their rules inside out and backwards and know exactly how and when to fracture them for the maximum effect.

My own approach- I do not consider myself a guru of composition bit I do have a good send of placement of objects and people within a frame. I am satisfied with a given composition when I feel that the image needs nothing added or removed in order to call it a keeper. I don't trace specific composition patterns or guides in my viewing screens while shooting but it seems that the images I am most satisfied with fall into to someof the more classical "templates" if you will.

Composite is a powerful tool. It helps you tell stories with your pictures. It leads the viewer's eyes to the motif or main subject. It can invoke moods of serenity and orderliness or create panic and confusion for the eyes and brain. Nowadays, it can be the most challenging aspect of photography. With today's built-in intelligent automation in-cameras, you can usually get accurate focus and exposure with very little effort. There are easily accessible programmes and workarounds for even complex lighting situations, however, there is no automation for composition- that is totally, exclusively and completely up to the photograher.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

The person who came up with the rule of thirds was a printer not a photographer or artist. It goes not make it wrong but we all need to not live buy rules in any personal development of an art form. Photographs for documentation is just that get the details ( as a fire scene investigation etc.) no art involved.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Your first boss was right . . . he just didn't give you the aesthetic judgement required to determine if it looked right. But that is what separates the adults from the children in the room. Those with higher mileage have learned what looks good, uysing the 10,000s of client interactions as a guide.

I always connect shooting pictures to cooking. You can always use a recipe that someone else wrote. But the results are not guaranteed. If the author didn't test the recipe as written, then it probably won't work. An experienced chef can glance at a recipe and do a quick analysis for content and accuracy and predict with some degree of certainty what the outcome will be. However, this is were rules (or recipes) can (and should) be creatively interpreted - based on the chef's taste, palate, ingredient sourcing, technique, etc - to make something spectacular. It's no different in creative photography.

Meadwilliam

The quote from O’Reilly is the kind of baloney one frequently encounters in writings about art. A structure isn’t abstract. The “rules” of composition are not abstract. The rule of thirds is quite specific.
I put the word “rules” in quotes because I don’t believe there are rules of composition. If quality art in any medium breaks these so called rules, how can there be rules.
How a photo is composed is the result of lifetime of attending to what one sees. One develops a sense of what works and sometimes it results in an amazing photograph. If one were to attend to the various “rules”, being sure the thirds are just right, for example, one would not be seeing the scene or object to be photographed.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

Composition?
As a devotee of “working the scene” I let the different perspectives on the scene determine which of the many “rules” (suggestions) of composition rise to the surface of the image construction process with each tweak of perspective: portrait vs landscape format, focal length(angle of acceptance), accommodations to lighting. Perceived negative space, etc, etc.
My personal impulse is to analyze the composition of every image I see - anywhere- that is worth analyzing, I.e. has impact for me. Composition has, for over 60 years become an almost unconscious drive and criterion for selection of perspectives on any scene or subject considered a candidate for image capture.

When the scene is changing before my eyes I am a devotee of capturing generous peripheral image space with almost every image to permit latitude in compositional cropping.

For the quick grab shot? Hard to beat “the thirds”!

Just one guy’s opinions!

Dave

reverand

I'm going to quote that important American philosopher, Yogi Berra: "How can you think and hit at the same time."

What Yogi was getting at was this: when you learn to do something, say, play a piece on the piano. You start by working deliberately, and slowly. You work out the fingering, revise it as necessary, keep trying it until it starts to feel comfortable. In the early stages, you're concentrating on the fingering, maybe the pedaling, but you're not making music. Once you have learned the piece, however, when you're playing it, you don't think of the fingering at all. You're now concerned with musical expression. You've internalized the technical work so that it becomes automatic.

Lots of tricks to batting: keep the weight back, keep your eye on the ball, see if you can see a spot on the ball (which would indicate the rotation of a curve ball), shift your weight as the ball approaches, try to keep your swing level, or slightly uphill, follow through. If you have to think consciously about any of these things, let alone all of them, while you're trying hit, the ball will be in the catcher's glove before you get a chance to move. You have to internalize this so it all becomes automatic.

Same with composition. Good photographers internalize all the rules, and the variations. They don't consciously think about the rule of thirds, or lines of convergence, or spiral organization, because all that has been internalized so that it can be deployed unconsciously. They just shift the camera around until the picture looks right. There's nothing sloppy or haphazard about this procedure: it's how an experienced photographer generally works.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Every craft, profession, art, discipline, trade, and technology has its LANGUAGE- "words"! Words are used so can communicate and exchange ideas, teach, learn, illustrate, explain and offer suggestion and critiques. We can look at pictures all day long but we still use words to explain, react, and communicate about what we SEE. Here on the forum, we exhibit images but also type a lot- we use words all the time. There are even rules and protocols as to how we tyope- like typing in upper case letter connotes yelling- it's a thing of the computer age.

"Rules" as they apply to aesthetics or art, in some perceptions, have become a dirty word. To me, "rules" in photograhy are not laws, carved in stone tenets, where the violation of which is punishable by exclusion, exile, or pubic shaming. They are just simply BASICS and an elementary foundation for learning, improving and executing techniques. Perhaps just a way of explaining things in a practica nut' and bolts manner. I learned a long time ago, you can not teach talent- you can only help fols develop their talents and encourage them to maximize their inclinations. You can't teach creativity, you can only encourage fols to learn the basics and apply their own unique variations. I don't expect everyone to SEE the same way or interpret everything the same way. For this reason, I don't worry about "sameness" Intrinsically creative fols will go their own way, others will just follow others.
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In fact, I firmly believe that learning certain "rules" actually stimulants and enables uniqueness and creativity. If you know what you are doing and have all the basic technology down pat, you have more time and energy to concentrate on the art. When someof the rudiments of composition and other elements become almost second nature that negates too much fumbling and fiddling with the gear and promotes really diving into the subject matter.

Frankly, I have to admit that my outlook on this may be jaded. After all, I do COMMERCIAL photography for a living and that is what I teach and train folks for. If the fledgling pro shooter is gonna make a living they need to know more basic nuts and bolts from the getgo. I can't teach them that when a client comes in with a requirement and deadline, not have any preconceived ideas or methodologies and just blindly have at it. In some cases, there are the fun jobs where one does get to create with a free hand and others where the photographer has to know exactly how to follow the layout to the millimetre!

Dean37 Loc: Fresno, CA

If the subject in the viewfinder is what I want to capture in the photograph, the shutter clicks. Rule of thirds sometimes, but not always. If I like what I see in the viewfinder my photograph will capture it.

Of course, I am the one who will keep or scrap it, so I am the final judge. Others are mostly critical, but they don't have to view it again.

I don't have to make money with my photographs, so I have full control. Selfish I suppose, but . . .

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Should we address you as "Picture Maker" from now on?

RodeoMan Loc: St Joseph, Missouri

Amen Brother!!

JohnR Loc: The Gates of Hell

For me photography is about light - reflections, sunsets, silhouettes, things, places, people - the candles on a birthday cake, crashing waves, a beautiful bird or flower - if it catches my eye then I shoot it. I frame without thinking - sometimes the rule of thirds happens without my knowing, sometimes leading lines manifest themselves - its not a conscious thing anymore. Maybe it was years ago but I have memory problems (joke!). I rarely shoot on dull days. I shoot jpeg and rarely do any post processing. The main use for my photos are as a screensaver on my iMac. Sometimes I (and my wife) just sit and watch re-living times past.

Beenthere

There are "rules" of composition - the rule of thirds, spirals, etc. Do you consciously think of and apply "rules" (guidelines) of composition or do you just move the camera until the image looks good in the viewfinder? From a compositional standpoint, what do you think about when you approach a subject?[/quote]

Like the saying goes "Rules are made to Break." These so called "rules" are just guides, and may not apply at all to what you're shooting. The other saying is "Take it with a grain of salt." Use your gut instinct to determine where the subject of your image fits. Happy shooting!!