Composition: Beyond the Rules by Cami Turpin
What’s the first thing you shoot for when you create a photograph? It might be light, or connection, or movement, or a perfect moment. I’ve read lots of discussions on the topic, and I don’t think ANYONE has ever said their highest priority in a photograph is composition. But without a good composition, all the beautiful light and connection and movement you can shake at it just won’t fly. You’ve got to use good composition to tell the story of your captured moment, or you might as well be a flash-in-the-pan young adult writer with a horrible editor. (I digress . . .)
I am guilty of almost never really NAILING composition in-camera. Every now and then I slow down and really take the time to get it just right, but most of the time I am shooting like a mad woman, trying to capture that fleeting moment, and the first thing I reach for in editing is the crop tool. Or, while I’m shooting, I often feel completely at a loss as far as composition goes and I just don’t know how to get anything special! I’d love to get a great composition in-camera, but I’m stumped.
We’ve had a lot of amazing examples, lessons, and tips on shooting for the composition rules like the rule of thirds, framing, straight horizons, leading lines, etc. Let’s talk a little about working through those moments of confusion, and maybe bending the rules a little.
SHOOT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER:
So much of the time, my final composition is quite different from the way I shot it. Often, there may be a choice between getting light or the moment and getting the composition just right. It doesn’t hurt to shoot for the moment! The composition can always be tweaked. You can’t edit in sun flare. (Well . . . yes you can, I guess, but you get what I mean.)
So let’s talk about my favorite editing technique—cropping. In these next shots, I knew I wanted my girls completely centered and shot that way for the entire series. I even moved the little tree on the left in Photoshop to create some nice symmetry in this first shot.
But while editing, I decided I wanted the girls to move through the frame in this next one, so while I shot it centered, I cropped it so they were on the right. Even though the general rule is to have subjects move through the frame left to right, I chose to keep them on the right instead of flipping it because I wanted a feeling of moving AGAINST the wind, with the wind moving through the frame left to right. It was a small change, but the crop changes the whole feeling of the image.
In this next shot, I had a busy background, no real composition, and it was hard to figure out where to focus as the viewer. But I loved the movement of the skirts and my younger daughter’s face and wanted to keep the shot. So I cropped in closer, cut off my older daughter’s head, made my younger daughter the subject, and minimized the distractions in the background. Throw-away images can often become keepers if you make a few changes in composition during editing.
Sometimes it’s pretty much impossible to get the shot you want in camera. If you have a shot envisioned, just do your best and see what you can do in editing. Slight changes can still make an authentic photo and capture the essence of the moment. No matter what, cropping is a HUGE part of how I compose, whether I plan it beforehand, get it in camera, or decide in post-production. In this case, I also extended the white table a bit to provide a little negative space, and cropped the front so the little buns are the real focus of the image.
TRY EVERYTHING:
Keep trying different things. Not getting the shots you wanted right at first? Being stumped on composition? Just shoot through it and see what you can come up with. I usually have an idea of the shot I want to get when I first start out, but my final keepers are almost never what I started out trying to get. I used to feel horrible about my first few shots, wondering why I couldn’t get the compositions I wanted. But I realized those first images get me to the last ones, and that makes them worth everything. If I’m like a monkey, jumping all around my subject and climbing on top of things and lying down in the dirt and whatnot, or even changing lenses or just moving my subject around in the frame, I end up with way too many shots, sure, but maybe shot number 198 out of 200 is THE shot, right?
This little one played in the dirt for just a few minutes, but long enough for me to get every angle and detail I could think up. But I had to move, and fast! I followed her around the room a little as well, but in the end, I had 20 very distinct compositions in my keepers during this 10-minute session. (Yes, I went into Lightroom and counted!)
This next shot I took at the very end of a very boring (for me) back-to-school session. I had taken hundreds of shots with an antique desk under and apple tree and was feeling very uninspired and had portrait burn-out. But I decided that I’d shoot through it and get something just for me. I let go of control, threw some books and apples down on a blanket, and was eventually rewarded with this genuine and beautiful moment. I find that most of my favorite compositions happen without me having to do much but be ready to capture them.
COMPOSE FROM THE HEART:
I think I have the rule of thirds imprinted on my retinas, but sometimes it just doesn’t feel right when I’m shooting or editing. Sometimes I find out I’ve inadvertently followed the golden spiral or some other rule, but most of the time, it just looked like that’s where my subject should be. Breaking the natural composition rules that feel comfortable to us (they are rules for a reason!) sometimes creates a mood unlike anything else. Want to show how teeny tiny your 6-year-old is next to that great big ocean? Maybe placing him in the rule of thirds isn’t going to cut it and you need to make him a tiny figure on the very bottom corner. Your subject is running completely out of the frame and has all their limbs cut off? Well, isn’t that a story about trying to catch fleeting childhood? If we are storytellers, sometimes we need to use composition to tell the story, and sometimes breaking the rules is the only way to do it.
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX:
I think I am sometimes too literal when it comes to composition techniques. I need to find some leading lines? I find some literal lines and put my subject at the end of them. For me that’s the equivalent of having my subject hold a frame around themselves while I’m trying to shoot for framing. HA! But when I start thinking less literally, and kind of let my intuition take over, I find that leading lines are almost something you can’t avoid! Looking for inspiration on Instagram the other day for leading lines, I found them in almost half of the images posted.
Literal leading lines.
Less obvious leading lines:
I have never shot on my driveway before, because I don’t love the street full of houses being in my shot. But when I was trying to get a shot of her coloring with chalk, I realized that if I adjusted my angle, the houses could actually create leading lines, AND they help tell the story of being part of a neighborhood that she’s just learning to navigate. Bonus!
Framing can also be subtle or literal.
Literal (door) framing:
Using natural elements for framing just takes a little paying attention. Just one step in either direction while shooting can frame your subject nicely with items in the background.
It’s not quite a picture frame, but other elements like the ring of fire can provide nice literal frames and bring the attention to your subject.
You can find ways to make every compositional rule work unconventionally if you’re keeping them in mind and trying new things.
SAFETY FIRST:
I hope this helps you both appreciate composition rules and also throw them away a little. I know people always say “learn the rules so you can break them,” but I always wonder at what point I’m allowed to break them. Well, you’ll never know if you don’t try! And in my experience, bending the rules or shooting through a lack of inspiration often leads BACK to getting a perfect composition with all the rules intact. With one subject in one place there are an infinite number of compositions to try. So DO it! Get your “safe” shots if you want, pay attention to all the rules, and then try something new and bend a few! You might get something even better than you expected.