Composition. It’s quite the word, isn’t it? Sounds so important, so competent. And in a way, it is.
There are many rules in regards to photography. Rules regarding camera technique (and these are fairly important, since they effect.. camera technical stuff that make the photograph look a certain way). Rules regarding composition. Rules regarding how to photograph certain things. Rules regarding certain movements in any photographic field.
Rules can be quite tiresome, to be honest. Some of them can be broken, or at least bent in different directions. Most of what can be bent or broken, should be so only if you know how and why.
But I am not here to tell you how to break the rules in any area of photography. I am here to tell you more about what composition is to me and why it is so deeply connected to perception – to me.
Composition
To me, composition is like furnituring a room. You have your given frame, and that’s the most important part in the entire photograph. I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it over and over again – reality is limitless, a photograph is not.
When we compose our photograph, it basically means that we decide where to put what element inside our frame. Like deciding where to put our sofa, our bed, out kitchen table, et cetera. A composition can be calm, it can be wild, it can be tranquil, it can be explosive – pretty much anything.
I won’t go into what’s right to do, because I really do think that’s different for everyone. Some people like wide angles while others like to keep it tight. Some like it messy with loads of clutter, while others prefer to keep a composition clean and tidy.
For me personally, composition is tightly connected to perception. I don’t photograph motifs, as many people do. I photograph tension, power exchange, energy, shape, form, direction, weight, et cetera. These things to not necessarily need a motif, as we understand the word.
Another way of understanding the word composition is to think of it as a system of distribution. What we see before us, what we choose to photograph, needs to be distributed within our frame, so that we can tell whatever story we want to tell.
Regardless of how we think of it, composition is what we do once we decide what to photograph. And what we choose to photograph is through what we see. This is where perception enters the stage.
Perception
To me, perception has a rather large meaning. It has everything to do with how we percieve the world, what we are drawn to (and why!), all the things we find important, how we filter our reality through everything we are (and who are we, then?), and much, much more.
Perception, thus, to me, means a shitload of awareness. Awareness of who I am, why I am who I am, what my life is centered around, how that effects my choices in what I photograph, how I photograph it, what I am drawn to, how I can empower whatever story or message I like to tell through my photograph – and so on. I realize this may not be the case of every photographer, but to me, this is incredibly important.
All of these things has an effect on how I compose my photographs.
Now, how my perception works in reality is a bit like this;
Since I don’t really photograph motifs per se, I tend to look for all of the things I mentioned earlier; tension, power exchange, energy, and so on. I usually find these things in very mundane places; stuff that others likely would ignore, because it’s not pretty or it doesn’t have an obvious story to tell.
Well, to me it does. Often, one of two scenarious happen. I either see something from a distance and the only thing I have to do is get close enough to frame whatever it [eye c] the way I want to. The other scenario is that I see something in the corner of my eye, almost missing it. This happens – not everytime I excercise my camera (whose name is Hilda, by the way), but every now and then.
There are a few other things worth mentioning when it comes to my personal perception.
I am lucky enough to be able to apply an imagined grid onto whatever small part of reality I want to photograph. This makes composition very easy for me, because I can see exactly how I need to distribute whatever elements there are, in my grid – even before I pick up Hilda to make my exposure.
Another cool feature is that it is very easy for me to translate what I see into black and white. When I look at my photograph-to-be, I already see it the way it’s going to look when done, which includes the editing process.
As you can see, all these things are very closely connected, for me. In situations where I teach, it can sometimes be very difficult to translate this into something that makes sense to people who aren’t used to thinking through these visual systems.
But – this works for me. In another blog post, I’ll start writing more about how I use composition, what I am looking for, the system I have created for myself, why I choose to photograph the specific stuff I actually do photograph… yeah, ok, perhaps there will be more than just one post. đ„”
One last thing about composition, though – if one starts looking at photography from the beginning (first photograph in 1836) up until now, it becomes very clear that composition is something that shifts over time. Photographs from midst 20th century looks very different from photographs today. Just thought it worth mentioning.
/Malinka
