Composition & Photography: Working with Photography Using Design Concepts

By Harold Davis

Own composition, use composition, and make composition your own in your photographs!

Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photograph, composition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time the most elusive. What makes a composition “good”? It’s hard to define exactly, but we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable emotional response when a composition resonates with and complements the subject matter of an image.

But traditional attempts to define “good composition” and to pass on rules for good compositional construction are often doomed to failure. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules. Rules eliminate experimentation and spontaneity, which are crucial for creating compelling, dynamic, and exciting compositions. The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected. “Expect the unexpected!” is perhaps the only viable “rule” of composition. To create exciting compositions, you must have a willingness to embrace serendipity and change as part of your artistic practice. After all, composition is a process, not a result.

In Composition & Photography, photographer and bestselling author Harold Davis teaches you how to perceive patterns and abstractions and incorporate them into your image-making process. If one of the goals of photography is to show viewers things that are new, or things they haven’t seen before, or things they have seen many times but need to see anew, then it’s with the thoughtful and considered use of composition that you do that.

In this book, you’ll learn how to reduce your subject matter to the fundamentals, and to show familiar subjects in unfamiliar, novel ways. Harold covers topics and themes such as:

▪ Lines and circles

▪ Rectangles

▪ Combinations

▪ Repetition

▪ Symmetry and asymmetry

▪ Abstraction

▪ Entering and exiting

▪ Vanishing points and perspective

▪ Emphasis

▪ Designing within a frame

▪ Creating order from chaos

Composition & Photography will help you find the tools and visual vocabulary to creatively design your photographs. Regardless of the genre and kind of photography you practice, you’ll learn to create powerful compositions that incorporate structure and form into your work in ways that best support your images. Along the way, Harold shows and discusses his own work relating to each compositional element or theme he’s exploring. And featured throughout the book are exercises about flexibility and process, designed to spur your creativity and help you begin an internal creative discussion.

“My goal as a photography teacher and writer about photography is to inspire and to help you become the best and most creative photographer and image-maker that you can be.”
―Harold Davis

“Harold Davis is a force of nature―a man of astonishing eclectic skills and accomplishments.”
―Rangefinder Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rocky Nook
• Release date: Jan 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781681987453

Book preview

Photos

edward

WESTON

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.

ansel

ADAMS

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photograph—or indeed any visual image—composition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time one of the most elusive. What makes a composition good?

We may not know what makes a composition good, but some compositions resonate, and we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it.

We also know that composition is the fundamental scaffolding of image-making. If you get it wrong in the camera, composition is the hardest element of an image to fix in post-production. Indeed, sloppy compositions often cannot be (and should not be) repaired in Photoshop.

Without an interesting and exciting composition, a photo will appear rudderless, empty, and lack compelling interest. The scene that was captured may be pretty, but the resulting image won’t catch the eye and fire the imagination.

Delving a little deeper, after acknowledging the importance of composition, we come to the realization that the only rule is that there are no rules. It’s indeed hard to create any unified theory of compositional construction that bears up across a wide universe of image-making. But as I already observed, we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable strong emotional response when a composition resonates with the subject matter of an image.

As the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson put it in the context of his own work, in addition to capturing the decisive moment in a composition, there needs to be an instinctive sense of geometry of the situation.

Thus, composition is crucial, and recognizable to both photographers and the viewers of their images. However, attempts to define good composition and, more importantly, to convey rules for good compositional construction don’t work.

The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected: Expect the unexpected!

Embracing the unexpected means becoming comfortable with spontaneity, serendipity, and change as a part your artistic practice.

Expecting the unexpected is probably the only viable rule of composition. Codification of composition risks eliminating experimentation and spontaneity, vitiates unexpected serendipity, and violates this rule.

Hey, there are no rules! So what’s the point of this book?

Forgetting about rules, there are ways of looking at subject matter—compositions—that can be very helpful.

Composition is a process, it’s not a hard-and-fast set of rules, and it is not just the end result.

Books about composition do tend to teach composition as a subject that can be clearly divided into a system of rules, such as the so-called rule of thirds. These rules are not necessarily wrong, but they are not generally applicable, and they should not be followed slavishly. Excessively following rules inhibits creativity.

Composition is not actually a system of rules: it is a process. My goal is to help photographers with the process of composition in the absence of hard-and-fast rules.

While there are many possible ways to interact with photographic composition, the approach I take in Composition & Photography is to show how patterns and abstractions can be perceived and encouraged as an underlying and fundamental part of composition.

To abstract something is to reduce the thing to fundamentals, or to show a familiar thing in an unfamiliar light using an interesting and applicable metaphor.

Photos

Window and Shadow—In this deceptively simple and contemplative composition, the photograph delivers a sense of enclosure while looking out the window at a brilliantly lit afternoon. The power of the composition comes from the near symmetry of the lit window and its shadow on a nearby wall in an otherwise unadorned room. This simplicity of composition adds a sense of isolation to the conversation between photographer and viewer.

Apple iPhone 6s.

Photos

Folds in the Earth—The challenge in photographing a landscape like this view from Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, California, is creating a cohesive sense of organization from an apparently disorganized system of rocks, canyons, dry river drainages, and the folds of the earth.

In addition, there is the challenge of showing a much-photographed scene in a new and original way.

Standing at Zabriskie Point just before sunset on a late-winter afternoon, I used a moderate telephoto lens (150mm) to isolate a portion of the landscape where the striations and differences between light and dark created an almost checkerboard pattern, particularly when viewed on the diagonal.

This diagonal alternation of lights and darks creates an underlying structure and pattern that provides a compositional armature so that viewers of the image will have an underlying sense that there is an order, albeit perhaps an alien sense of order, beneath the chaos of the anarchic landscape.

Nikon D850, 150mm, five exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 1/8 of a second to 1.3 seconds, each exposure at f/20 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

A fundamental goal of composition is to show us things that are new, that we haven’t seen before, and to show us a subject in a new way (or in a new light). So in this sense, abstraction is a key tool—and sometimes the overall goal—of composition.

Composition & Photography is a guide to visual conceptualization, and a coach for enhancing your inherent sense of composition.

When compositional serendipity comes knocking at your photographic door, do you stand ready?

My goal in writing Composition & Photography is to empower you to become the best creator of structure and form in your photographs that you can be.

To accomplish this intention, I begin with the very simplest compositional elements, such as lines and circles. As we go along, these elements are combined to make patterns. Finally, I’ll show you how to combine techniques and begin visual conversations to create powerful compositions, regardless of the genre and kind of photography you practice.

Along the way, I will show you examples of my work that are illustrations of the compositional design principles explained in the text. Each image is accompanied by caption information and the compositional idea behind the photo.

I’ve also included exercises and thought pieces with the text and images. Often these may seem open-ended and without a definitive solution. This is in the tradition of the Zen koan: with these I intend to provoke thought and test your convictions, rather than supply my solution.

In other words, Composition & Photography is intended to spur your creativity and help you begin your internal creative discussion. The examples and exercises are about flexibility, process, and ideas. Please use these ideas to enhance your own inherent creativity!

What is most important to you? You are the artist and this practice is about your art. There are no rules, and the job of your compositions is solely to support you, your creativity, and your art.

Own the power of composition, and use composition to make your own unique photographs!

My hope is that this book will help you on your journey to finding the tools and visual vocabulary that will enable you to creatively design the structure behind your imagery. It’s worth repeating again that this is not a book about rules: this is a book about making great photos!

Photos

Berkeley, California

KEY IDEAS

The only rule is that there are no rules.

Composition is a process, not a hard-and-fast set of rules.

Understanding underlying shapes and patterns supports the practice of composition.

Compositional practice is about your art.

Expect the unexpected! Leave room for serendipity in your compositional practice.

Photos

Endless Doors—The basis for this image uses a moderate telephoto lens (95mm) to capture a series of receding doors in the Officers’ Quarters at Fort Point, under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.

When I looked at the resulting photo on my computer, I saw six doorways, and at the end of the progression, a somewhat unattractive display case. To take this composition from mediocre to exciting, in Photoshop I removed the display case and composited the image with itself to extend the sequence of doors.

While this image belies my general tendency to get it right in camera, it was important to keep a set of fresh eyes on the composition so that I could figure out how to make something special of it.

Nikon D200, 95mm, 10 seconds at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Photos

Manarola—Along the rugged Ligurian coast of the Italian Riviera, the Cinque Terre region stands out for its spectacular mountainous scenery with cliffs running down to the water’s edge and colorful seafaring villages.

There are few things more exiting to me in composition than to be able to create some form of geometric order out of apparent disorganization and chaos. It was with this in mind that I framed my image of the interior of historic Manarola village.

Nikon D810, 122mm, five exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 1/250 to 1/4 of a second, each exposure at f/8 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.

Photos

Reichenau Causeway—This bike-path causeway leads to Reichenau Island, a World Heritage Site that lies in Lake Constance, which forms the border between Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The causeway was completed in 1838 and stretches from the ruins of Schopflen Castle and the eastern end of Reichenau Island.

Waking before sunrise, I pulled on some warm clothing and headed out with my gear to the causeway to photograph the lines created by shadows, the rows of trees, and the demarcation of the bike path.

Nikon D850, 28-300mm Nikkor at 92mm, five exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 1/50 to 0.4 of a second, each exposure at f/22 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

Photos

Consider the line. The line may be the simplest form in geometry. And in our perception.

Or not. Not quite.

The point is simplest. Maybe.

But lines are made up of an aggregation of points.

Points themselves are aggregations of points, until you go down in scale to the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level. To put this another way, zoomed way out, a circular photograph—such as made by an 8mm round, wide-angle fisheye—can appear to be a single point or dot.

Zooming in, if there is enough resolution, the closer you get, the more you can see the points within that make up the point. Resolution willing—perhaps you are in Photoshop on a large, high-resolution monitor at 1,000 percent magnification—each of these points that you have previously enlarged can themselves be enlarged. And so on. The world at large is composed of worlds in the macro-aggregate. (This concept is illustrated on pages 20–21).

But let’s get back to the line. In terms of how we see the world and view photographs, lines are perhaps the most basic of all forms, and are a better starting place in the quest to understand and work with composition than the point.

Starting with a line, you can go almost anywhere.

Aggregations of lines make up shapes. As they make the shapes, lines help provide the illusion of depth, perspective, and contrast. Lines are the hard-working soldiers—you might say, line workers—that build the scaffolding that is composition, and form the underlying basis for composition in art.

So, let’s consider the line. Particularly the expressive line.

Photos

Line Dance—This image is a seemingly simple composition that presents an irregular upright line and its reflection in the upper-left quadrant. This line was formed by an old piling in San Francisco Bay, with the motion of the bay water calmed and abstracted with a long shutter speed (10 seconds).

The apparent simplicity of the image belies the contrast between the spacial simplicity of the smooth water and the abrupt verticality of the line. In this case, the result works as an image, and appears simple—but this contrast between a straight vertical line and an abstract horizontal background can be tricky to pull off.

The things that bring us the most joy are not overly complicated. Perfection in an image usually involves creating a sense for the viewer of unforced simplicity.

Nikon D300, 18-200 Nikkor at 200mm, 10 seconds at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Some lines just sit there. They don’t do anything. Think of the light blue horizontal lines on a sheet of notebook paper as an example. These lines are the utilitarian bureaucrats in the world of composition. Basically, one should pay no attention to them unless an image embraces regularity as an underlying scaffolding.

Other, more dynamic and interesting lines convey questions, thoughts, and emotions. These lines are expressive and have meaning that is conveyed by what they are.

How can a mere line do this? How can a simple line convey so much? To analyze these questions, we can begin by thinking about some characteristics of a line:

Weight—this refers to the thickness of a line and is a holdover from the time when lines were created by pressing a stylus, so the weight, or thickness, of the line depended on how hard the stylus was pressed.

Color—lines are easier to see in monochromatic composition, but play a vital role in color composition as well.

Direction—even lines that are not explicitly directional often have an implied visual movement and direction.

Curvature—how much or how little the line curves.

The weight of a line really means how dark the line is, and thus also involves color. A very dark line splits space, and may convey determination, or possibly anger. When a line is very faint, or light, it might indicate indecision, or even tension over whether the line itself should exist.

A faint line cannot be used to anchor a composition that is primarily linear, as are Line Dance, on pages 20–21, and Reichenau Causeway, on page 18. If you are going to use lines as the crucial aspect that dominates other shapes of a composition, you must be fearless and bold. The very rarity and unlikeliness of this kind of composition gives it power and grace, but the fewer the elements in the composition, the trickier it is to pull off.

Color may seem to be an obvious characteristic of a line (at least in a color composition). What perhaps is less obvious is that the choice of color conveys an underlying emotion to the viewer. Bright colored lines in oranges and red often are happy, while dark colored lines in black, brown, and somber hues can be unhappy.

Photographically speaking, it is often easiest to see how lines form a composition when working in the absence of color, in black and white. Another way to put this is that our eyes love color, but they are often misled by color, and the underlying composition is best seen and constructed without color; thus, one way to check your composition can be to view your image in monochrome.

A composition that presents an inherently sad subject (perhaps involving loss or memory), but uses bright colors, will strike viewers as dissonant, though they may have no idea why. Conversely, a happy subject in dark colors may often make viewers think that conflict is around the next bend—for example, a storm may be coming.

Almost all lines in a composition have an implicit direction. Absent an arrowhead at the