Composition - Principles

• Principles of the composition of paintings were forced upon photography in the mid-nineteenth century and it was perceived as an art form.
• Other practitioners rebelled against photography as an art and those conventions and they viewed it as a medium in its own right.
• Today, unlike art, everyone can do photography.
• Composition rules are created from what practitioners view as an effective image rather than scientific experiments.
• The eyes work differently to the camera in the sense that the brain can block out unwanted details in view but the camera gives everything in the same depth equal prominence. 
• "Photograph what you see not what you think you see."
• Photography is "organised visual lying".
• Composition is identifying elements to produce a coherent image. Everything in an image forms this.
• A photographer's goal is to "become fluent in the language of composition."
• The image is broken down into shape, form, texture, line, pattern and colour which all create composition.
• Both photography and painting change the world from 3 dimensions to only 2 as well as freezing time. 
• Whereas painting is the art of constructing an image, photography is the art of selecting one. 
• Think about what can be left out of an image rather than what can be put in.
• Check for clutter in the background.
• Zoom lens or move in closer to clear clutter.
• If this is not possible, you can use selective focus or choose a shallower depth of field.
• Images can be simplified by reducing or taking out the colour or putting a subject in a setting of high-key or low-key tones.
• Fibonacci sequence can aid composition.
• Rule of Thirds: focus of interest must be placed on one of the dividing lines that split the frame into thirds vertically and horizontally.
• Dynamic Symmetry is shown by the black lines and the rule of thirds shown by the blue lines in the image below.
  
• Take photos from high/low viewpoints, not just eye-level to vary the images captured.
• Low viewpoints emphasise the foreground whereas high viewpoints detach the viewer from the action. 
• Where the horizon line is can affect the interpretation of the image.
• Perspective and vanishing points are key in the composition of an image. A telephoto lens flattens the perspective and brings both foreground and background closer together whereas a wide-angle lens emphasises perspective.
• By moving and changing the focal length, the images taken have different perspectives. This also affects images of the human face radically - longer focal lengths flatten the face but wide-angle lenses mean you have to be a lot closer to the subject and they make the face look distorted in a way.
• Size and scale can be misleading in photographs, which can be an interesting technique.