Page 18 - Cape-Camera-June-2022

June 2022 Cape Camera

Photographic Technique

Composition

3 ways to improve your composition

by David duChemin

All of us want to make better photographs, and for most of us
that’s not something we were born with. But the visual lan-
guage that’s responsible for making stronger photographs is
something you can learn.
"Composition is everything. You can have all the gear - or all the
vision - in the world, but it's composition alone that gets you to the
more powerful photographs, the ones that connect and stir some-
thing in people."
At a certain point in our photographic journey, we all come to
the sobering realization that there is so much more to making
great photographs than just knowing how to use the camera
really, really well. That combined with our craft, is our use of the
visual language or composition that is responsible for the best In this image, it was the figure in the beam of light that mattered
photographs. So because composition is something that can and the contrast with the smoke in the sky that determined my
be learned, I want to give you three ideas you can take right exposure and my choices about what to leave in and leave out
now to begin improving your compositions. I'm going to talk or which moment to choose. Figure out what the heart of your
about it in terms of how we think because if we can change the images is and you'll be much closer to being able to make deci-
way we think we can change the way we make photographs, sions about how to best show that in the final photograph.
that's where it begins. 2. Think in terms of energy
1. Think in terms of the heart of the photograph
Ask yourself..What one thing is this photograph about? and We respond to visually energetic photographs. It's not the only
way to make a great image, but it's a good start. And we have so
how will it connect to someone looking at your photograph? much control over the elements in the frame in order to create
What is the emotional core? A lot of our photographs fail simply or control that energy.
because they don't have a heart? Or they do but it's way too
spread out around the image. You have to make specific choices
to isolate that one thing and make it as strong as possible. Pho-
tographs can only carry so much information or they just fall
apart for lack of impact. Focus to really maximize one thing, one
feeling or mood one story, one, juxtaposition or gesture, and
then eliminate everything that is not that or doesn't help to ex-
press that. Here are two examples.

We can make lines more energetic by moving our perspective
and making them diagonal instead of straight.

In this image from Venice above, the heart of the image for me
was the contrast between the man outside and the man inside.
Every decision I made had to support that. That's why the frame
is divided. It's why I used a wide lens. That's why I stood where I
did and moved my point of view to exclude everything else and
in part, it's why I made the choices I did in Lightroom. warming
the left slightly and cooling the right.

17 Cape Town Photographic Society