Sun 15 Jul 2007

Photo Composition Quickcheck

Many words have been written about what makes a good photo and how to compose and frame a shot. For the rank amateurs, such as myself, though, there's a huge difference between knowing these guidelines intellectually and being able to put them into practice. Even when sorting through photos and trying to decide which ones to publish, it's sometimes hard to work out if a photo is going to be interesting for other people to look at or not.

Recently, more or less by accident, it occurred to me that Flickr's badge of photos that are in many sidebars (including on this blog), provides a quick check as to whether the composition in a photo is working easily or not. The smaller size concentrates the eye on the overall features of the photo and not the detail. This is neither a new discovery nor a hard and fast rule (see below for some obvious exceptions), but I thought it was interesting and this is my writing space. Following are some examples of what I've noticed in my own photos.

All of these images are Flickr's thumbnail size (100x66). The images link through the detail page on Flickr if you want to see the full size shot.

Bad

Have a look at these two shots.

In both shots there is no real feature that jumps out. They are just a blur of colours. In the second shot, the person in the lower-left might be relevant, since he's an obvious stick of colour. Sadly, the real interest in that photo is right in the middle of the image.

Looking at the larger sizes, they strike me as being fairly crappy photos in some sense. Both shots are relevant to me, in that they capture something I want to remember. But they aren't particularly informative to anybody else.

Good

Here are a few photos that, in my dubious opinion, have reasonable composition and more or less work at all sizes. In each case, I've put an outline drawing next to the shot showing what stands out for me in the thumbnail. Comments for each image follow the image.

I was very lucky with this shot. The light coming through the window doesn't overwhelm the indoor setting, despite it being a bright summer's day outside. Sulamita, on the left, has a hair colour and clothing that contrast nicely with the background. So the two central figures stand out from the background noise.

Looking at this a few months after I took it, I would probably trim the right hand side a little bit, removing the people there, so that the focus was on the main subjects a bit more.

A lot less contrast of colours in this shot, compared to the previous one. The lines converging to a point that is (very) roughly one third down from the top and one third in from the right, just as the textbooks recommend, help the composition, at least in the small size. At larger sizes (see the photo detail page), there are a few things that detract slightly. When I took it, I hadn't originally framed the shot to focus on the lady who's waving at the camera (she only looked up at the last second) and, given my time over, I would move her slightly right and up. But I'm not unhappy with this as it stands.

I should trim the bottom of this shot. Even in the thumbnail, the crooked table edge at the bottom annoys me. To be fair, the focus here was on Pia's facial expression. Any resemblance to a good shot was entirely accidental. However, using my quick check of the small size, it seems to not completely suck.

Doing this exercise, particularly creating the little outline versions, has reminded me that I need to take this more seriously when editing photos before publishing. As a rule, I tend to colour correct slightly, if necessary, but not trim or rotate much at all. This photo could stand a trim, though. Clearly, the cloud is the focus. So why is it only appearing halfway up the shot and not, say, one third of the way up? Why is half the photo given over to the contrasting foreground? What lamer is responsible for this?

I still like the cloud, though. That's the view from my home office and happens not infrequently.

No Rule Is Foolproof

Like any shortcut, this trick isn't universally valid. Or, at least, it's subject to taste and peoples' tastes vary greatly.

Consider these two thumbnails:

In both cases, I like the larger images. I can see details in the thumbnails that are present and relevant in the bigger pictures. The beauty (to me, at least) of these photos is in the details and that doesn't come through in the smaller versions.

When I see shots like these on my Flickr homepage (in the stream of images from other, random people), I'm actually fairly likely to click through. The image looks busy in some way and there's likely to be something of interest to look at. What they don't do is catch the eye immediately. So the viewer (me) as to think a little bit before going deeper. That's not a bad thing; art that doesn't engage the mind is of limited long-term interest.

Conclusion

More than once (sadly), I've looked at the Flickr badge in my own sidebar and wondered what in the world one of the photos was. A bit of concentration cleared it up, since I took all of them, but it's momentarily disturbing when I can't recognise my own photos. This led me to wondering whether this was always a bad thing or not. My thoughts on this technique are still forming a bit, but it's been interesting to trundle through my photos using an intentionally small image size to see what jumps out (or doesn't).

Topics: art, photography/flickr