Sparrow
Veteran
... and they'll say anything to look good in an interview ... I recall Henri claiming that cropping thing, in artistic terms very similar to Madonna singing Like a Virgin 
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Have you read Weston's Day Books or Adams Autobiography? They all were very, very fluent in the language. How could Weston's words about composition becoming part of a personal way of seeing or Brant saying photography is not a sport, there are no rules or Newman saying the are no rules and regulations and Winogrand that said there are no external or abstract or preconceived rules of design that can apply to still photographs are all just trying to look good in an interview? If you read anything about their philosophies you know that these words are what they believed. They all knew that if they followed they would just be like everyone else. They choose to learn how to see in their own ways instead of following preconceived rules and that is one reason they are still in this conversation and their work and words are still relevant.
RichC
Well-known
"The language" you speak of is the rules!
All the dead guys you quote used the rules of composition. What you are arguing against is using the rules without understanding them. Those dead guys knew the rules of composition (some intuitively - if they were lucky enough to be born that way), and used this visual language as part of their personal vision.
How to communicate visually requires learning the "rules" of composition. But making good pictures is not following these rules blindly but understanding them - why and how they operate. The dead guys knew this.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Rich read post #25.
gns
Well-known
Rich,
If we say that good composition just IS good and bad, bad, aren't we just accepting those culturally engrained tendencies as orthodoxy? And isn't the point of art (beyond say calender art or what you might call decorative arts) to show something new or at least in a new way? For me, the bigger issue is how to get away from the "Good" pictures I already know.
If we say that good composition just IS good and bad, bad, aren't we just accepting those culturally engrained tendencies as orthodoxy? And isn't the point of art (beyond say calender art or what you might call decorative arts) to show something new or at least in a new way? For me, the bigger issue is how to get away from the "Good" pictures I already know.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
RichC
Well-known
I agree with everything you say- except the first sentence. And I'm sure Stewart does too. You are using the rules: your photographs show that you use the rules exceptionally well.
The "rules" in composition aren't discrete: they interact with and modify each other. You can teach someone the "rules" so they can make competent pictures - but creativity is something you're born with. Sensing when the "rules" interact to create the perfect moment to press the shutter is intuition and create a picture that's uniquely you: that's something you can't teach.
Some people are subconsciously aware of these rules and naturally intuit how they interact without conscious thought. Other like me - and you, by what you write - need to work at picture-making and seeing to help us become more fluent in visual language: we improve over time. Still others are visually illiterate (the visual equivalent of tone deafness): for them, the only way they can take pictures that aren't awful is to blindly follow rules like the rule of thirds.*
I think perhaps the problem is the word "rule", implying edicts that must be followed without connection to reality.
Perhaps we should talk about the grammar or language of seeing rather than rules? Though they're the same thing...
[*Which I don't believe in. It's pseudo-science and cod psychology! All it's really saying is stick your subject away from the very edges of your picture and the middle (the former is very awkward and offputting to look at, the latter is very boring). If you understand visual language, it is clear what dividing the picture into halves does, or placing your subject in the centre or at close to an edge of the frame. It is also clear - if you understand visual language - that the rule of thirds fails because it is an edict of the kind you dislike. There are plenty of times when the rule of thirds fails: when placing the subject in the centre or at an edge makes the picture rather than breaking it.
Knowing about composition - the "rules" that Stewart is attempting to describe - frees us to make pictures using our own personal vision, and allows us to understand gross simplifications like the rule of thirds properly.]
Yes. Yes. I agree!
However, to make visual art it's essential to understand how it works, which includes its orthodoxies.
I consider myself a contemporary art photographer, and have a master's degree in it - during the course we had to make work, and if the tutors for a second thought we were being derivative and not throwing light (literally) on our subject in a new way, we'd get a really low mark, or even failed. We weren't taught composition, though, nor was it discussed: but we were expected to know how pictures work - which of course includes composition.
Regarding the rules of composition being useful to make only "good" (what you call "decorative") pictures: I completely disagree. Yes, the rules can be used in this way - but they also need to be known so you can ignore, twist and subvert them to your own novel way of seeing.
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airfrogusmc
Veteran
Language is not the rules it frees you from rules and then there is the even more important aspect that rarely gets talked about how is the image working in the context of the photographers other work, is it meeting the intent and are we seeing any of the creator in the work. If you follow rules of comp,as Weston said, there can be no freshness of vision. We see that has come true as we look at all the look alike images being made for all the rule followers that can't see beyond that on the web today. Everyone making images to play to other on the forums and to get likes instead of following ones own vision which may not be understood by the ones that are locked into the rules.
Again they rules and becoming visually fluent and not the same thing and should not be seen as that. And this is exactly what those dead guys are talking about. Oh, Duane Michals is still alive and kicking.
The important thing that keeps getting missed is how does one make it all his own?
Wanted to add that language is in a constant state of flux and changes. Weston, Winogrand, Michals all had an impact on its change as have many other artists. And maybe even some of us explore the world outside the rules. Rules don't change. THe RoTs is still the RoTs and the rule of 5ths is still the rule of 5th and golden rule or what ever you ant to call it is still just that.
I think GNS was really getting at something in his post. To expand is how many times do people create something and all those locked into rules don't see it as good pr valid? It happens all the time.
“No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.” -Martha GrahamMy adice is go look at the work of the greats. Look at new work. Read literature. Look at films. Not to copy but the more you do these things the more you open yourself up. I think your work reflects everything you know however deep or shallow that may be. Wasn't it Minor White that said all photographs are self portraits? And Adams said something a long the same lines.
Do these things so you can think for yourself instead of having to follow a roadmap of rules. Try to make images that reflect who you are and how you feel about the world. Create because you have something to say and the best way for you to say it is to show it in a picture. Think more about if the visual statement is conveying the message you intended instead of worrying whether it fits into a preconceived rule.
Again they rules and becoming visually fluent and not the same thing and should not be seen as that. And this is exactly what those dead guys are talking about. Oh, Duane Michals is still alive and kicking.
The important thing that keeps getting missed is how does one make it all his own?
Wanted to add that language is in a constant state of flux and changes. Weston, Winogrand, Michals all had an impact on its change as have many other artists. And maybe even some of us explore the world outside the rules. Rules don't change. THe RoTs is still the RoTs and the rule of 5ths is still the rule of 5th and golden rule or what ever you ant to call it is still just that.
I think GNS was really getting at something in his post. To expand is how many times do people create something and all those locked into rules don't see it as good pr valid? It happens all the time.
“No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.” -Martha GrahamMy adice is go look at the work of the greats. Look at new work. Read literature. Look at films. Not to copy but the more you do these things the more you open yourself up. I think your work reflects everything you know however deep or shallow that may be. Wasn't it Minor White that said all photographs are self portraits? And Adams said something a long the same lines.
Do these things so you can think for yourself instead of having to follow a roadmap of rules. Try to make images that reflect who you are and how you feel about the world. Create because you have something to say and the best way for you to say it is to show it in a picture. Think more about if the visual statement is conveying the message you intended instead of worrying whether it fits into a preconceived rule.
Sparrow
Veteran
... shall we just conclude that you don't agree with me? that while you were reading all those photo books I've been wasting my time trying to understand this stuff. You now have 32 posts contradicting me on this thread, only two less than I have, and I managed to include the article itself into my 34 posts, and you are arguing a point I'm not making anyway, please re-read the first few lines of the first post
Now I don't mind comment, in fact I'd encourage it but yours Alan is getting a bit repetitive and making the thread look quite untidy and difficult to follow.
Now I don't mind comment, in fact I'd encourage it but yours Alan is getting a bit repetitive and making the thread look quite untidy and difficult to follow.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
No I agree with you when talking about things like line, shape, form, diagonals, color, pattern and other such things. And how those things can effect how feel about images. They can work in very different ways depending on each individual image. Again and I said this earlier these things change for each image and are even different for different cultures and individuals but rules like RoTs are constant. One takes time and real effort to master the other is just a prepackaged rule that anyone can have etched in their brain or focusing screen and picks up one of those books.
gns
Well-known
Well let’s look at the rule of thirds.
First. In the diagram below, is “A” really any more interesting, more pleasing (pleasing is a word you hear with composition often although I’m not sure what pleasing has to do with art), or inherently better in any way than “B” or “C”?
Not to me. The rule of thirds tells us it is. Maybe there is some study that supports it, I don’t know and don’t care.
Second. I don’t care because it is far too simplistic. Not many photographs contain just one element like this, and as soon as you introduce other elements, then the position in the frame of that first element is going to be dependent on the position of the others, isn’t it? It is all pretty complex when you are looking at a hundred things in your viewfinder (some consciously, some subconsciously). You have to somehow corral all of that into some kind of order, but to fall back on a simple rule of thumb is to ignore what’s going on and work by rote.
That’s why I think these kind of rules are just bunk. I think that it’s really just a way to tell a beginner, “You don’t have to put something in the center of the frame”.
First. In the diagram below, is “A” really any more interesting, more pleasing (pleasing is a word you hear with composition often although I’m not sure what pleasing has to do with art), or inherently better in any way than “B” or “C”?
Not to me. The rule of thirds tells us it is. Maybe there is some study that supports it, I don’t know and don’t care.
Second. I don’t care because it is far too simplistic. Not many photographs contain just one element like this, and as soon as you introduce other elements, then the position in the frame of that first element is going to be dependent on the position of the others, isn’t it? It is all pretty complex when you are looking at a hundred things in your viewfinder (some consciously, some subconsciously). You have to somehow corral all of that into some kind of order, but to fall back on a simple rule of thumb is to ignore what’s going on and work by rote.
That’s why I think these kind of rules are just bunk. I think that it’s really just a way to tell a beginner, “You don’t have to put something in the center of the frame”.
Attachments
Sparrow
Veteran
---------------
... I've used this image a few times, to demonstrate closure ...
il-2a par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity
... and at this point I usually ask the dissenters how many circles they can see.
I expect they think it a trick, but is there anyone who doesn't see circles in that image? it is just so obvious despite there not actually being a single circle in it. Humans, once past the age of three we, humans, can't help completing known shapes that are partly obscured or outside the frame of view.
I read somewhere it was all about working out what type of animal was partially obscured by some bit of primordial jungle just after we came down from the trees ... whatever causes it we tend to follow the path of lines or shapes even when obscured or outside the frame.
I'll not pick on that girl on the crossing again although you'll see the same effect on that ... here's one of mine I cocked-up a while back in Corfu Town, in my defence I was going for my first coffee of the day at the time ...
2810126869 46703e66f8 o par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity
and the rule says you'll try to complete the outline of the girl (just for you Alan) and in cutting her feet off I've spoiled the shot ... now who thinks this is a pointless rule? ... lets hear why it's OK to cut someones feet off or having partially obscured subjects in your photos ... anybody?
In addition the same effect given half a chance will distract the viewers eye both inside and outside the frame, any feature that leads the eye to the edge of the frame runs the risk of the viewer's eye along with their attention going out of it ... as in this shot from Paul (paulfish) the legs, and those poles doing most of the damage ...
As always those same features can work the other way and concentrate the viewer's attention to a point or region, as in this rather striking shot by Lukitas from the 'brutal' thread. Here coming from the corners and converging as they do they almost insist one looks at the centre of the frame ...
... so if the much discussed Rule of Thirds does at least make you think twice about putting stuff close to the edges.
I may go on to do Symmetry ... next
.................
... I've used this image a few times, to demonstrate closure ...
il-2a par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity
... and at this point I usually ask the dissenters how many circles they can see.
I expect they think it a trick, but is there anyone who doesn't see circles in that image? it is just so obvious despite there not actually being a single circle in it. Humans, once past the age of three we, humans, can't help completing known shapes that are partly obscured or outside the frame of view.
I read somewhere it was all about working out what type of animal was partially obscured by some bit of primordial jungle just after we came down from the trees ... whatever causes it we tend to follow the path of lines or shapes even when obscured or outside the frame.
I'll not pick on that girl on the crossing again although you'll see the same effect on that ... here's one of mine I cocked-up a while back in Corfu Town, in my defence I was going for my first coffee of the day at the time ...
2810126869 46703e66f8 o par Sparrow ... Stewart Mcbride, on ipernity
and the rule says you'll try to complete the outline of the girl (just for you Alan) and in cutting her feet off I've spoiled the shot ... now who thinks this is a pointless rule? ... lets hear why it's OK to cut someones feet off or having partially obscured subjects in your photos ... anybody?
In addition the same effect given half a chance will distract the viewers eye both inside and outside the frame, any feature that leads the eye to the edge of the frame runs the risk of the viewer's eye along with their attention going out of it ... as in this shot from Paul (paulfish) the legs, and those poles doing most of the damage ...
As always those same features can work the other way and concentrate the viewer's attention to a point or region, as in this rather striking shot by Lukitas from the 'brutal' thread. Here coming from the corners and converging as they do they almost insist one looks at the centre of the frame ...
... so if the much discussed Rule of Thirds does at least make you think twice about putting stuff close to the edges.
I may go on to do Symmetry ... next
.................
kuuan
loves old lenses
cut off feet sure most usually disturb but not necessarily do, e.g. I am thinking of a wide view from a low angle.
Only a photo with partially obscured subjects can show how very busy a place, where it is difficult to avoid them, really is.
MickH
Well-known
Really nice to see everyone violently agreeing with one another.
lukitas
second hand noob
Thanks Stewart! Maybe that is what is wrong about this one : all the lines point to the middle, but there is nothing there...
On rules, at the risk of repeating myself, rules are not the simple, black and white, forbidden or permitted thing we would like them to be, and that counts for every domain in which rules play a role. Some rules are absolute : thou shalt not kill. Some are expected to be broken : Nobody drives slower than 125 kph when 120 is the maximum allowed, and tax evasion is usually seen as rather heroic, in a small way. One of my great aunts used to stress the NOT in 'Wouldn't you have a cup of coffee' : we learned pretty fast that accepting such an invitation was absolutely forbidden. And then there are the unspoken rules, the ones we never think about, but never break : When invited for dinner at a friends house, after dessert, it would be a mortal insult to take out my wallet and offer to pay my part, whereas it would be seen as a faux-pas if I arrived empty handed : a bottle of wine, at the least a bouquet of flowers are expected. On the other hand, I have read that in some cultures taking out your wallet is the done thing. And refusing the proffered payment can be seen as required, or rather impolite. In any case when I offer flowers and a bottle of wine on arriving at a friends house, they are supposed to say : 'Thank you, but you shouldn't have gone to all that trouble'.
Rules are a complex phenomenon. Some demand to be broken, some you can't touch with a 10 feet pole. Some are explicit, some are implied, some are subconscious, and some are traditional leftovers from a culture so far past, we cannot even imagine how society functioned in those days.
No less in art. I commend Stewart on trying to chart the rules of composition, a most worthy endeavour, and I look forward to his development of the subject.
Can we now please concentrate on what the rules are? I would like to see the discussion on when one should wipe ones derrière with the rules kept for later, or maybe even for another thread.
cheers
On rules, at the risk of repeating myself, rules are not the simple, black and white, forbidden or permitted thing we would like them to be, and that counts for every domain in which rules play a role. Some rules are absolute : thou shalt not kill. Some are expected to be broken : Nobody drives slower than 125 kph when 120 is the maximum allowed, and tax evasion is usually seen as rather heroic, in a small way. One of my great aunts used to stress the NOT in 'Wouldn't you have a cup of coffee' : we learned pretty fast that accepting such an invitation was absolutely forbidden. And then there are the unspoken rules, the ones we never think about, but never break : When invited for dinner at a friends house, after dessert, it would be a mortal insult to take out my wallet and offer to pay my part, whereas it would be seen as a faux-pas if I arrived empty handed : a bottle of wine, at the least a bouquet of flowers are expected. On the other hand, I have read that in some cultures taking out your wallet is the done thing. And refusing the proffered payment can be seen as required, or rather impolite. In any case when I offer flowers and a bottle of wine on arriving at a friends house, they are supposed to say : 'Thank you, but you shouldn't have gone to all that trouble'.
Rules are a complex phenomenon. Some demand to be broken, some you can't touch with a 10 feet pole. Some are explicit, some are implied, some are subconscious, and some are traditional leftovers from a culture so far past, we cannot even imagine how society functioned in those days.
No less in art. I commend Stewart on trying to chart the rules of composition, a most worthy endeavour, and I look forward to his development of the subject.
Can we now please concentrate on what the rules are? I would like to see the discussion on when one should wipe ones derrière with the rules kept for later, or maybe even for another thread.
cheers
Sparrow
Veteran
Yes sir, I think that too, although I think it is a spectacular photo anyway, and in a group of such shots it would be a star.
... these aren't rules, they are just our perception. The words are unfortunate
bobbyrab
Well-known
With the best will in the world Stewart I'm struggling to find much in the way of good composition in your Corfu shot, I can see the main circle from the girl through the men and the bollards back to the pigeon on the right, beyond that not really. The framing is wonky which is not a big problem, but it does irritate me with architecture, the girl should in my opinion be in focus as she's the only person who's face we can see properly and she is at least doing something, and you've cut her foot off ( there I said it).
Sometimes it's not a problem and doesn't detract, sometimes it snags which it does here.
All of course just one persons opinion and nothing more. I know your not asking for critique, but if you are going to stand up and give lessons I think the examples should be watertight really.
Sometimes it's not a problem and doesn't detract, sometimes it snags which it does here.
All of course just one persons opinion and nothing more. I know your not asking for critique, but if you are going to stand up and give lessons I think the examples should be watertight really.
Sparrow
Veteran
bobbyrab
Well-known
My apologies, I thought the circle thing was being carried over into the next shot, so the Corfu shot is about the cutting off of feet? is this a good or a bad example, you don't actually say.
Sparrow
Veteran
"here's one of mine I cocked-up a while back in Corfu Town" ... did you miss this bit, or was cocked-up not a familiar turn of phrase?