Your Most Powerful Composition Assistant
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In this article, I want to discuss what I believe is the most powerful aid to composition skills development.
We are all aware of, or at least have heard of, the myriad “Rules of Composition”. Any can be very helpful when used in a manner appropriate to the content, yet I see many images that demonstrate no application of compositional guides and others that exist soley as examples of compositional guides that don’t actually add anything to the image.
Compositional skills are not permanent. They degrade without use and application. Many photographers feel a lot of internal pressure when making an image, and composition does tend to be one of the elements that goes out the window first. Due perhaps to the low cost of storing an image, perhaps the adoration for burst mode or perhaps being consumed by some form of automation, we all tend to come home with far more images than we will actually use. Whether one keeps the ones we don’t use is a personal decision and I will avoid that topic as invariably I piss someone off.
The most important thing to consider when focusing on composition is to slow down. Perhaps your subject does not allow this, and that is fine, but then it is the wrong subject for building compositional skill. A tool that always buys time is a tripod.
The Right Tripod
The right tripod isn’t about a brand, or what you paid for it. It comes down to some simple criteria that we should all be aware of.
The tripod head and the leg set may come as a kit, but you should be able to select each independently of the other
The tripod leg set should be of sufficient length to reach your mid chest without engaging a centre column if one exists
The tripod leg set should be made of a vibration retardant material. That means a quality carbon fibre weave
The tripod head if you are making stills must be a ball head with smooth movements and precision locking mechanisms
The head should use the industry standard ARCA plate mounting system. Proprietary mounts are on their best day a serious pain in the ass
The pan and tilt functions on the head should be separate controls and ideally there will be a drag control on the tilt portion to allow for fine movements
A built in level is handy, but you really want the level either in the camera or in one of those cheap levels that mount to the hot shoe. Levels on a tripod head can be hard to see and hard to achieve. Levels on a leg set deliver no practical value at all
The tripod leg set should be specified to support at least 1.5x the weight of your camera and heaviest lens
The tripod ball head should be specified to support at least 1.5x the weight of your camera and heaviest lens. These capacities are not additive
The tripod should be easy to extend and to collapse and be light enough that you will use it and take it with you. If not, it’s the wrong tripod. A tripod in the closet has no value at all.
An L bracket for your camera is not mandatory but is integral if you will be changing the sensor orientation from horizontal to vertical or vice versa. Flip heads are universally a poor solution
Placing Your Tripod
The tripod placement must never define the image. Your intent for the image should define the angle of view required / desired and the tripod merely exists as a stable platform for compositional change.
Also remember that the tripod while affected by gravity is not stuck in a gravity well, If you don’t like what you can see and compose, move the tripod to a different spot.
A Tripod as Compositional Tool
Now that you have your tripod and camera placed to suit your intent, stop and step away. Look at your subject / scene and note in some way all the things that make up the overall shot.
What is there that must be dominant to the viewer? Is there clutter or crap that will take attention away from the subject? If it cannot be easily removed, you will need to move. Depending on anything for removal after the fact is risky. It might work, but it also means you get the lazy stamp in your photo workbook.
Now look through the viewfinder or the LCD, whichever you prefer and view your composition. Are there composition rules that will help the image without becoming the image. Leading lines are handy but too often BECOME the subject and that is massively boring. Does your placement put the subject dead center? As my friend Rick Sammon reminds us, “dead center is deadly”. Sure there are times when it works, but the probability of dead center placement success is very low indeed. Is the angle of view of the lens delivering what you want to achieve or are you going to have to resort to lots of work in post? Getting your composition right in camera is a goal we should all aspire to achieve.
Now think about the exposure that will best deliver your intent. I’ve already talked about how the meter’s recommended exposure may be the wrong decision for your goal. Yes storage is cheap. Which leads to bracketing. Useful in a pinch, but lazy overall. Read the light and expose for your primary subject. Everything else is ancillary.
This is also a good time for what Rick calls “border patrol”. Walk your eyes along all the edges to check for things making intrusions into the shot that will detract from it. Move them, or move you, or if very small, note to remove in post.
Now make the image. This is tough because I challenge you to think like you are using an 8x10 view camera. That means you get one shot, not 103. Certainly if something fails badly, make another image, but don’t be sloppy and plan on “fixing things in post” or shooting 20 of the same thing, believing that one will be that much better than the next. Your goal should be to get it right in one, because when you are in the situation where time is limited and you have to work fast, you will only have the time to get it right the first time.
Wrapping Up
Go on. Try it. I challenge you, or in the vernacular of the six year old, I double dog dare you. This is important skills development work and anything worth doing is worth doing properly.
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