Composition: Pointing

This is the first of a series of articles on composition in photography — obviously an obsession of mine, because first, it is so fundamental to making a successful image, and second, it receives so little serious comment. In fact, it was this paradox that prompted me to write a book called The Image many years ago (now well out of print), and its successor, The Photographer’s Eye. Funnily enough, the latter was a hard sell for me to make, probably because most publishers have a list of what they want to do and this largely coincides with what they’re familiar with. And the trend, if you’ve noticed, is to concentrate on the mechanics of cameras and computer software. I think they may have thought that composition was vague or artsy a subject. Encouragingly, though, the book’s great success shows that there still are people out there interested in what goes on inside the viewfinder more than what goes on inside Photoshop.

I set out the overall framework for composition in the article Wonk on the Observations page three months ago. Now, in Techniques, I’d like to start dealing with specifics. One ideal in composing a shot is to be able to influence the way a viewer will look at it. By no means always possible, and never certain at the best of times, but undeniably useful when you can. This month, let’s look at one of the most straightforward techniques for influencing the viewer’s eye — ‘pointing’. Naturally, it requires certain conditions, but when you can recognise them in a situation, you have the opportunity to exploit them — or not.

Lines, the play of light, perspective and focus can all have a strong effect, as the examples here show, and as the list explains. Leading the eye from one part of the frame to another has two particular uses. One is to draw attention to a specific feature, and because the attention is going to be forced towards it, you then have the opportunity to keep it small. The other is simply to create a vector — a movement across the frame that inevitably helps to make the view coherent.

Linear perspective AND lines, exaggerated by a wide-angle lens, lead the eye fairly directly towards the building in the distance. Note that the slightly shallower pitch of the roof at the end of the barn, and the lower part of the tree work to ‘bend’ the linear perspective slightly.

A straightforward and strong instance of an eye-line that needs no diagram for explanation. The large painted face of the Virgin Mary instantly attracts attention (faces have a strong visual weight and it is relatively bright), and her apparent gaze leads the attention down to the row of bishops.

A wide-angle lens localises the bright area around the sunset, and additionally adds some vignetting. The result is a typical kind of ‘tunnel’ effect, and the eye is drawn inwards along the tone gradient. Nothing remarkable about this, but it can usefully reinforce other elements that lead the eye.

Shafts of light need a particular condition: dark surroundings, direct sunlight through a window or small opening, and atmosphere (in this case a little smoke from a stove). The resulting ‘finger of light’ effect is always powerful, and of course can be enhanced in processing by turning up the contrast, clarity and even saturation.

Here, even with a 600mm lens, the hyaena with a flamingo is almost too distant to be noticed, but the focus gradient draws the eye towards it. And the light shading adds to this (see above).

But, as with all aspects of composition, things are rarely so simple. Much more common is when different influences combine, as in the last three images below. In two cases there is a main figure facing away from the camera, so naturally this is going to take the viewer’s gaze in that direction also. These are eye-lines but assumed, as we don’t see the face.

The overall wedge shape of the white burqa-clad women, reinforced by the diminishing perspective of the two standing, leads the eye right and up. There, the man weighing acts as a stop because of the way he is facing, and eye comes to rest at the scale.

An assumed eye-line from the foreground figure, added to by the rather less obvious two figures in the middle distance, combines with an obviously strong geometrical perspective (because of an ultra-wide angle lens used from close) to focus attention firmly on the airborne flag.

Again, an assumed eye-line from the bathing girl, this time added to a tonal gradient that takes the eye up towards the just-visible sun through the leaves.

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Tags: composition, focus, perspective