Composition is the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work. The general goal is to select and place appropriate elements within the work in order to communicate ideas and feelings to the viewer. It is the primary element in photography and an important concern in drawing. Wikipedia.
To take a picture you need to get the exposure and focus correct otherwise the picture ‘won’t come out.’
But what if it does ‘come out’ well but it’s a stillborn misshapen non communicative mess because the photographer doesn’t understand the disciplines and techniques of visual narrative?
The basis of all picture making is a sense of composition; whether it be photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, animation, film making etc.
Decisions about ‘lighting’ and ‘focus’ are similar to spelling and grammar in a written piece of communication. The ‘composition’ gives us ‘the overall’ message.
The Information. The Headline.
The image maybe a sexy woman. ‘The overall’ image... woman.
A wide shot shows us this.
A ‘particular’ feature contained within the woman’s ‘overall’ image.
You cannot focus your eye on both ‘the overall’ and ‘the particular’ at the same time.
Control of when the switch from one to the other takes place is part of the journey artists take you upon.
This is a visual phenomena described by painters as focusing the attention on ‘going from the overall to the particular.’ The artist guides your eye. Taking you on an edited journey through the image... leading you towards what he believes is important.
Like an actor using his voice to draw the viewers attention to a particularly important and consequently more dramatized line of dialogue.
Leading you to a ‘particular’ point of view. The artists point of view.
Master photographers do NOT "crop" their pictures they pre-visualise the final image within the frame of the camera's view finder, mapping out the viewers visual journey through an image, like traveling a road across a landscape maps out the journey of a vehicle upon that road, building in the stops, detours or surprises along the way..?
Artists have been doing this forever using systems that define visual proportions like ‘The Golden Section.’ The difinitive "landscape" rectangular proportion similar in shape to 35mm film proportions, a cinema screen, or interestingly an upright magazine page laid on its side.
The Golden rectangle. Wikipedia.
A distinctive feature of this rectangular shape is that when a square section is removed, the remainder is another golden rectangle with the same proportions as the first and this square removal can be repeated infinitely, which leads to an approximation of the golden spiral.
Approximate golden spiral (green) made of quarter-circles in squares successively removed from a golden rectangle.
Any artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the form of the golden rectangle, which has long been considered aesthetically pleasing. Wikipedia.
The Parthenon's facade showing an interpretation of golden rectangles in its proportions.
Then there is "The Rule of Thirds"
The rule of thirds is a guideline commonly followed by visual artists. The objective is to keep the subject(s) and areas of interest (such as the horizon) out of the center of the image.
Note how the horizon falls close to the bottom grid line, and how the dark moody areas are in the left third, whilst the bright highlight areas are in the right third. Wikipedia.
In paintings we see how complete and precise is the artists technical control over the geometric language hidden within the construction of his work.
The Master photographer must do the same in order to control his composition.
Without conscious composition successful pictures are usually unrepeatable flukes.
A photographers visual philosophy does not develop through ‘fluke’.
A ‘repeatable’ visual philosophy in pictures is not something based on accident.
And great photographers always use a strong sense of composition to develop a repeatable ‘ look’.
Study the history of photography and you can tell a John Loup Seiff or an Irving Penn at twenty paces.
Jeanloup Sieff (November 30, 1933 – 20 September 2000) was a practitioner of the photographic art of high fashion, and avowed a fidelity to the frivolous and superficial. His legacy places him in the top rank of fashion and art photographers. Wikipedia. 
Jeanloup Sieff's work is unmistakable. The clean modern elegance of his images is combined with a cool sensuality influenced by the "new wave" film-makers of the 50s. A personal erotic vocabulary in his nudes and fashion photography is evident; long bare backs, delicate curves and lingerie. Wikipedia.
Irving Penn (b. 16 June 1917) is an American photographer known primarily for his fashion photography, Penn's work shows a unique vision and a wide range of subjects. Wikipedia.
Pablo Picasso. Penn
Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970platinum/palladium print, 1976. PennPenn's style. Composition, careful arrangement of objects or people, form, and the use of light characterize Penn's work. Penn photographs with great detail and clarity and his prints are always clean and clear.
Many times his photographs are so ahead of their time that they only came to be appreciated as important works in the modernist canon years after their creation. For example, a series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump were shot in 1949-1950, but were not exhibited until 1980. Wikipedia.
The visual style, the look, of a master photographer is hugely important… and part of that ‘look’ comes from the style of composition they each produce.
For example when someone contracts Annie Leibovitz for a shoot they don’t know how the image will come out… no one does… but they do know Leibovitz’s ‘ look …’ that’s the insurance policy against failure… that’s the clients ‘comfort zone producing’ guarantee.
Leibovitz is a noted American portrait photographer whose style is marked by a close collaboration between the photographer and the subject.
Leibovitz's portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Wikipedia.
Leibovitz's portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken the morning of the day on which Lenon was shot dead was an iconic moment in History Frozen in Time Forever...
Achieving this personal style or ‘look’ is one of the qualities that defines the ‘real’ artist photographer from the pedestrian snapper.
Masters of photography always have a personal all defining ‘look’ which is usually emulated by others; but almost always the original is the greatest.
And originality is their thing. There will never be another Helmut Newton for example.
Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter (October 31, 1920, Berlin, Germany – January 23, 2004, West Hollywood, California, USA) was a German-Australian fashion photographer noted for his nude studies of women.
I can recognize his pictures from two rows away standing in a crowded subway.
Helmut Newton established a particular style marked by erotic, stylised scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts. A heart attack in 1970 slowed his output somewhat but he extended his work and his notoriety/fame greatly increased, notably with his 1980 "Big Nudes" series which marked the pinnacle of his erotic-urban style, underpinned with excellent technical skills. He also worked in portraiture and more fantastical studies.
Wikipedia.
Helmut Newton films.
Polyphemus the Cyclops.
What they see is not what everyone sees. The single lens forming a frame through which they view the world. Choosing "the point of view..." and needing to have a visual philosophy applies as much to photography as it does to painting.
There is one major technical difference however.
The painter prefixes and prejudges ‘the moment’ his picture is to communicate.
The image becoming frozen in his head as he paints.
In his minds eye the image becomes static fairly early in the process.
Whilst the photographer is usually searching for a ‘moment’ that he cannot ‘see’ easily amongst many moving movements.
This is one of the essential image making differences between the two mediums.
Photographers often find themselves composing ‘on the move’.
Consequently "seeing" good photographic composition comes more from our subconscious than from our conscious mind.
Only the subconscious is ‘instinctively’ quick enough to see and register the constantly changing and evolving plethora of detail within a shot.
See how an auto focus camera ‘searches’ for its focus when lined up on a picture like the one above... trying to quantify and respond to the movement that the experienced photographers subconscious eye senses quite naturally.
I can work faster manually, the lens never searches at just the wrong moment and it makes me concentrate harder... producing images with more defined edges of frame.
One thing Master photographers are always clearly obsessed with is this conscious and often mystical freezing of ‘the moment’.
Like the precision of a Samurai warriors sword play, a master photographer often picks his shots whilst moving and shooting at high speed.
Searching for one defining moment that’s often too fast to see until it’s past.
When a good photographer shoots 50/100 frames of something it’s often because he’s allowing his subconscious eye to lead him to the heart of the moment.
Freezing a moment in time forever is a powerful and mystical thing if treated with the respect it deserves...
A meditation on a moment lost as it is born...
Look carefully at Irvin Penn's potrait of Pablo Picasso and think about it for a moment. It's a visibly invisible map showing us what we would never otherwise see.Like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ stepping through the looking glass, a picture takes us through a doorway into another world.
Alice surrounded by the characters of Wonderland in The Nursery "Alice" (1890)
*Lewis Carroll (see appendix 1.) who wrote ‘Alice In Wonderland’ was an acclaimed Victorian photographer.
Photo of Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll. (1858) wikipedia.
With the advent of Modernism tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s. He is now considered one of the very best Victorian photographers, and is certainly the one who has had the most influence on modern art photographers. Wikipedia.
‘Alice in Wonderland...’ after all is this not what photography is all about..?
A "framed" doorway into a wonderland. There is a link here I think... but it will only become more apparent when we know more about the workings of the subconscious mind, which we have already postulated plays a large part in photography as a medium.
It's too coincidental that a great phototapher created the mythology of "Alice in Wonderland" who passes through a framed looking glass doorway into a wonderland embarking on a psychadellic hero's journey that has resonated in the ears of generations of children growing up to become adults touched by the myth of Alice.
I suspect the concept behind this tale has a deep psychic and mystical resonants otherwise the story would have become unfashionable and have died a death by now... It seems to live on forever... like an old family photograph.
An old friend of mine once wrote a perfect description of the ‘true’ photographers condition.
He was one of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ 'top London fashion photographers.’
Terry Donovan always drove a Rolls Royce. A wink from "a Roller" helped interaction with the amazing chicks floating along the London streets in summertime.
Making him even more interesting, although he needed no help in that area as he was hugely intelligent and incredibly charming.
A fanatical martial artist. He produced ‘Yellow Dog’ the first British Kung fu movie.
Very cult at the time.
Donovan was shooting all the time. For Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Harpers + Queen and Cosmopolitan. He shot a Pirelli calendar which is as good as it ever gets for a pro photographer… it’s like getting an oscar.
Pirrelli calendar.
He shot over 3ooo television commercials. Directed music videos like the sexy award winning Robert Palmer ‘Addicted to Love.’
What is written in the front of his book of erotic pictures explains something fundamental about the nature of photography and the photographer. I came across his book recently ‘Glances’. Gathering dust on my bookshelf. Blowing off the dust I read something that sent me back in time like only music, taste, smell and words can… And photography!... I quote an echo.
‘I have often considered the evaporative qualities of human life, also that of my own craft of photography. I ask you to look out of the window.
If there is a street, there will be people moving through it and across it, vehicles passing either fast or slow.
I ask you to consider the notion that none of the objects, people or vehicles will ever re form in that precise order again that you are now observing them.
That moment will glide away into events that have passed irretrievably.
This in a larger sense is the situation that every photographer finds himself in if he has an observant eye. In his brain, he is continually bombarded with evasive images.
These are evident briefly, then they skitter away untrapped.
So here are my glances from a life.
After many years as a fashion photographer I would never be so foolish as to try to isolate and distinguish what it is that is so powerful about the beauty of a woman and the overpowering disturbing tactile images that have presented themselves before my camera.’
Terry Donovan. London. 1983.
See ‘Glances’ by Terence Donovan published by Michael Joseph. London.
Just as...
"if P(-(square root of 3) over 2, -1 over 2) or 7(pye) over 4 radians c) 19 (py) over 8 radians..."
or
...the I Ching are ancient formulas... so too composition is an ancient formula.
Leading the eye… to a strongly ‘sensed’ but invisible climactic moment… showing us things that otherwise would run through our fingers like the sands of time.
Master Photographers develop a sixth sense for this.
How can I develop this sixth sense?
The true answer is I don’t really know. I can only tell you what worked for me.
I studied painting before photography and got fascinated by the history of art.
As my photography began developing I kept going to Gallery’s like the National Portrait Gallery or The Tate Gallery in London... really studying the paintings and it was there that I started to grasp what was meant by ‘good lighting and composition’.
A way to study and learn photography is by studying painting.
And apply the lessons to your own photographic images.
Leonardo Da Vinci's illustration from De Divina Proportione applies the golden ratio to the human face. Some suggest that his Mona Lisa for example, employs the golden ratio in its geometric equivalents.
Try looking carefully at Leonardo’s work or any other great painter before you start to shoot next.
ADDENDUM: A psychologist once explained to me how important it was for a leader of men, an army officer or film director for example... to listen carefully to the opinions of his men because if everyone (all trained professionals) disagreed with his decisions then he should think twice about those decisions... if however everyone agreed... without any persuasion... then he was being given authentic external confirmation of the correctitude of his decision making process. And I am always searching for external confirmation that what I am writing is not twaddle.
For me "wikipedia" is "the oracle" come alive.
I have used edited sections from wikipedia to qualify and add professional external confirmation of the validity of my references, facts and opinions. I could have read these sections and re-written them myself... but I wanted the authentication that only someone else's qualification and opinion gives to a history of photography. One needs an accurate historical piece, filled with authentic reference.
Should you like to check the back-story out by looking at more images of the photographers works... Penn, Sieff, Liebowitz, Newton, Carroll or the formulas of classical composition... "The Golden Rectangle..." "The Rule of Thirds..." All of this can be found on wikipedia under the correct keywords.... Thank you wikipedia the "oracle"
endix 1. Lewis Carroll
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ('Lewis Carroll') - believed to be a self-portrait
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass.
His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite, and beyond this his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture, directly influencing many artists.
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey.
He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.
A recent study [Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling's Lewis Carroll, Photographer (2002)] exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls. Alexandra Kitchin, known as 'Xie' (pronounced 'Ecksy'), was his favorite photographic subject. From 1869 until his giving up photography in 1880, Dodgson took at least fifty exposures of her, the last of which just before her sixteenth birthday. However, before attempting to draw any conclusions about Dodgson's proclivities or obsessions, it should be noted that less than a third of his original portfolio has survived. He also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, trees, scholars, scientists, old men, and, indeed, little girls. His notorious (and possibly misunderstood) studies of nude children were long presumed lost, but six have since surfaced, four of which have been published.
Photo of John Everett Millais and his wife Effie Gray with two of their children, signed by Effie. (c1860).
He also found photography to be a useful entré into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Dodgson abruptly ceased to photograph in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. His reasons for abandoning photography remain uncertain.
With the advent of Modernism tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s. He is now considered one of the very best Victorian photographers, and is certainly the one who has had the most influence on modern art photographers.
The possibility of drug use
There has been much speculation that Dodgson used psychoactive drugs, however there is no direct evidence that he ever did. It is true that the most common painkiller of the time—laudanum—was in fact a tincture of opium and could produce a 'high' if used in a large enough dose. Most historians can infer Dodgson probably used it from time to time to ease the pain of his arthritis, since it was the standard domestic painkiller of its day and was to be found in numerous patent medicines of the time, but there is no evidence he ever abused it or that its effects had any impact on his work. There is no factual evidence to support a suggestion that he smoked cannabis. However, many people regard Alice's hallucinations in the Wonderland, when surrounded by teas, mushrooms and smoking insects, as references to psychedelic substances. This suggestion of psychedelic drug use made him extremely popluar to the counterculture of the 1960's and was a positive way of showing the main stream that one of there most famous and highly regarded writers also used these forbbiden substances. The band Jefferson Airplane also wrote a song depicting the book Alice in Wonderland as a psychedelic drug trip in the song White Rabbit .
Alice surrounded by the characters of Wonderland in The Nursery "Alice" (1890).
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