Breaking the Rules of Composition

When is it acceptable/advisible to break "the golden rules" of composition? For

example, in a square photograph, does it work to have the horizon divide the

picture into halves? Is one always obligated to visualize using the classic

grid dividing a picture into thirds?

Obligated? By whom?

There are no "rules" in composition. There are "suggestions" and for some things there are "guidelines," but there are no "rules."

I'm sorry, William, but if we see you dividing a square format with the horizon, we're going to have to write you up. Do it again, and there will be SERIOUS consequences.

 

Actually, lighten up a bit! The subject matter, the presentation, the audience, and a thousand other things will determine if the traditional composition strategies are really helpful for a given shot. There are definitely some arrangements that sit better on the eye... but nothing suits your work better than what you like when you see it.

http://www.ericfredine.com/default.htm

There are rules, if breaking them doesn't work. Were there photos in your own 'portfolio', here, that are examples of what you're talking about?

Rules are made to be broken! Guidlines are meant not to be followed! Those are the only rules to art and photgraphy.

You can try to break the rules but it will not be pretty.

If you're making pictures for other people, then the guidelines are ignored at your peril because your work will be evaluated in terms of their expectations. Otherwise, the "composition anarchists' " advice can free your creativity to find what works best for your sense of organization and effectiveness.

 

The guidelines have evolved over the centuries and represent what most people find pleasing, but have been successfully violated by those who understood what they were doing and why they did it. It's usually a good idea to learn the rules before you decide whether or not to break them: they were surely not made to be broken indiscriminately.

I almost agree with what Dick has just said, although you don't have to learn the rules in order to be able to break them - <I>you need to learn the rules so that the elitists who define the rules in the first place will respect your work when you do break them</i>. <BR><BR>From the art world look what happened to poor Rousseau..

I don't think most photographers are aware of the rules of composition as developed during the Florentine Renaissance or the Beaux Art era (architects may be more familiar with them). The issues of horizon line, "thirds -- the grid, is the kindergarten version.

 

Unless the photographer is working in studio conditions where he or she has control over every aspect of and in the subject-frame like an art director, the photographer is limited to what presents itself to the camera and how.

 

In both instances the tendency will be to adhere to the rules, even if they are consciously unknown, due to cultural "osmosis".

 

Breaking the rules is so common that they have become rules themselves. This is most often seen, professionally, in advertising, book and magazine cover photography for example because it draws attention, tending to stand out. If the goal is to draw attention to itself, the rule is to break a (cultural and unconsciously expected) rule.

 

In varieties of candid photography, photography of the moment, there is little opportunity to compose according to the rules (that may be done later by cropping if possible). In such photography, the frame and subject 'emit' their own rule, which is what captured the photographer's attention and caused her to raise the camera and release the shutter in the first place. Since my photography is mostly of that sort, I tend to let the frame/subject compose itself.

The "rules", as I see it, are specific formulas or recipes that attempt to isolate and define

elements of human perception that make an interesting or pleasing composition.

Knowledge and use of these rules might yield some worthy results, but without an innate

understanding of the underlying processes that these rules refer to, the imagemaker

(artist/photographer/painter/sculptor/musician...) will never achieve consistently great

results.

 

IMO, Don E's comment about the subject composing itself is right on the money. An

internalized sense of these processes is the goal, bypassing (and surpassing) the external

imposition of "rules".

Do you think there could be some similarity between the way a visual artist arranges the elements of a composition and the way a musician arranges the sounds of a musical composition? When it comes to classical music, there are certain conventions that are followed that help to guide the listener through the piece, just as the conventional guidelines of composition encourage the viewer's eyes to enter a scene at the desired spot and travel through the image in accordance with the artist's plan.

 

Just as with street signs and pavement markings, these conventions help to guide the audience in such a way that the artist/composer's message can become clearer.

"Do you think there could be some similarity between the way a visual artist arranges the elements of a composition and the way a musician arranges the sounds of a musical composition?" --Dick Hilker

 

Composition, aural or visual, can be thought of as finding coherence or 'signal' in 'noise'. As sound, noise is noise because it lacks coherent pitch or tone (noise is not necessarily unpleasant -- the babbling brook, the sighing arbor...).

 

Take a camera and walking along simply raise it with no particular intent...waggle it above your head this way and that at whatever angle as your hand and wrist flop about as you walk along and release the shutter. What will have been captured is visual noise -- bits of this and that. It might actually be interesting, amusing, revealing. Not all visual noise is unpleasant. What it won't be is a coherent composition.

 

Human vision 'normalizes'. It composes on the hoof. Letting the frame/subject compose itself is to let it express itself in terms of human vision, rather than applying a rule-set of assumptions to it.

The rules of composition are for me a starting point, or a place to begin. They are not laws

but simple guidelines to start from. Where you go is your choice. The rules of composition is

a way of breaking down a way a scene looks and way to start maximizing it potential. To

Quote Bruce Lee: Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In

short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it.

LEARN, MASTER AND ACHIEVE!!!

When I look at a photograph, a potential photograph or a painting it never crosses my mind to check for compliance with a set of rules, guidelines, principles , or whatever. I consider whether I like it and try and avoid excessive rationalisation about why. If there are people around who have to run a compliance check before they decide whether they can like a picture or a subject or not I feel sorry for them- they're missing a lot. I wonder if they dislike books with grammatical errors too.

A subject never organizes itself in a photograph or drawing or painting. The artist consciously or subconsciously organizes it.

 

In art, rules made be "made to be broken", but it helps to know the rules before breaking them. that is one of the ways you grow as an artist, by pushing against both "the rules" and "your rules".

I'd like to find a book or website of these classic rules. How do you learn them short of a

formal education in photography?

<i>"I'd like to find a book or website of these classic rules. How do you learn them short of a formal education in photography?"</i>

 

 

 

This one about Dynamic Symmetry might be a good place to start: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Dynamic-Symmetry-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486217760

As a pro photographer I instantly compose my shots by the rules and do not press the shutter release until I see something right. It normally only takes a few seconds: moving myself and/or the subject until it is right.

<I>The guidelines have evolved over the centuries and represent what most people find pleasing,</i><P>

 

I would agree with this and say that it is at the heart of the issue. Many people want to make "pleasing" photos. However, for those of us for whom "pleasing" is not the end goal, why would we want to follow the "rules"?<p>

 

Looks at Moriyama. In museums everywhere, prints sell for thousands of dollars, probably one hundred published books of photos, and no attention at all to the "rules." <a href="http://www.teppertakayamafinearts.com/daido_moriyama/0003.htm">This one </a>, for example, is in museums and galleries, what rules does it follow? (Photo has content some people may find objectionable.)

"A subject never organizes itself in a photograph or drawing or painting. The artist consciously or subconsciously organizes it." Ellis

 

It organizes itself in terms of human vision...I'm feigning that the subject is animate here in order to distinguish between seeing it through an overlay of rules, desires, and requirements -- speaking in terms of the non-professional photographer who doesn't have an obligation to fulfill with a photograph, or who is not creating the subject and frame on a stage in a studio (including on location) -- and seeing it as it is presenting itself to the photographer.

 

This "presenting" has to have some value in terms of photography if it has captured the photographer's attention and caused him to release the shutter.

 

What the subject can't do is organize itself in terms of the camera's "vision". The photographer has to do that consciously -- the classic example of the tree seemingly growing out of someone's head.

 

The camera can "see" things normalizing human vision may not. I photographed a house down the street. It wasn't until I saw the photo that I could see that the house was definitely not plumb, that it leaned strongly one way. Unlike a tree growing out of someone's head, it made for a stronger photograph although I never saw it through the vf.

 

I'm writing long replies on the subject here and elsewhere because due to injuries and uncooperative weather, I haven't been able to work on the several projects that interest me for nearly a year. I've been limited to photographing nearby and easy to get to things that normally wouldn't have interested me. I've had to overcome frustration and anger and to relax and let photography happen to me in the mundane, banal, obvious, commonplace universe of houses, streets, and lawns, or whatever is available from the roadside.

 

Letting go of my preconceptions, moods, and attitudes, by letting the subject/frame appear without my forcing it, has made me a better photographer, better able to continue my "real" photography when I can, and grateful, rather than frustrated and angry, over circumstances.

 

Regards,

 

Don E

Ellis: "A subject never organizes itself in a photograph or drawing or painting. The artist

consciously or subconsciously organizes it."

 

A subject can resonate withour internal aesthetic, and sense of order. While it may not

actually "organize itself" into an image, it can certainly "suggest" a compostion. Much of what

we do in our creative endeavors is unconscious. The more deeply we internalize the

processes that these "rules" are based on, the less conscious we become of the rules

themselves.

"A subject can resonate withour internal aesthetic, and sense of order. "

 

So you have no role in sensing that "resonance"? You, as a viewer, are the medium in which there is a resonance (or that thereof). as a photographer, you are the intelligence which organizes it in the context of the frame, you decide where the composition begins and ends, you decide when to open the shutter and when it closes, etc.

Absolutely! I make the decisions. But with regard to the "rules" of compositon, I don't

reference them consciously. I do what I do with an intuitive knowledge of the elements of

(what I consider to be) good composition. Often, my perception of a fitting compostion is

in line with the historically established "rules", but probably almost as often, my

perception is at odds with those rules. I know what I like to see, and what arrangement of

elements in the frame resonates with my inner sense of order and balance. I've never

hesitated for a second, when it comes to opening the shutter, to consider whether my

composition is going to satisfy a rule or convention.

 

Consider the attached photograph.<div></div>