Project 5: Photography I The Frame Exercise 3: Point

This exercise has two parts. Firstly, we were to take some photos of a point within a scene, composing each image according to the rule of thirds, with our chosen point in various places within the frame. I chose to use a park bench as my point.

I think the first of these works best because the scene is balanced with not only the bench but also the curve of the path beginning in the bottom right third and then leading the eye towards the centre of the frame. However, I also like the second image because of the way the lines of the path and the grass flow around and beyond the bench. The third image is unsatisfactory because of the way the foliage on the island creeps into the top of the frame and because the top of the scene feels messily cut off. It almost reaches the horizon but not quite. 

The second part of the exercise was to take more photos of the chosen point but without following any of the rules of composition. We are asked how we might evaluate these images when they don’t follow the rules. 

This image feels clumsy, as if I’ve made a poor attempt at photographing the bird. There is no real focal point and every element that could have served as one is cut off.

This image is more successful, because, while the bench has lost its place within the frame, other elements have come to the fore. The three sinuous lines bordering the water, path and grass have become the subject of the image.

Similarly, in this photo the tree has filled the top right third and become the part of the picture that draws the eye. Again, the bench as point has got lost, but other elements have taken its priority.

With the bench dead centre and the tree above, there is nothing anchoring this image. It feels unbalanced. My fingers itch to crop off the right third of the photo.

My eye is trying to drag me back to where I started, as the bench moves back towards the intersection of the bottom/right third.But the angle is wrong and the tree is too far in from the frame.

The same as above, but more so. Nothing is where it should be.

This one is unbalanced vertically. The buildings in the background need some sky above them. The path in the foreground is very dominant and there’s no clear reason for this to be so.

And I found my way back to where I started.

With this second set of photos I had to think a bit about what it is exactly that makes the photos not work. I look at them and they seem wrong, but that impression registers much more immediately than the reason why they’re wrong. Ordinarily, if I had such photos in my photo stream I would press delete immediately, without really evaluating why in a rational way. The reading of the image alone just shouts ‘wrong’ at me.

There were some successful images among the random photos, but they work because other elements than the bench are playing by the rules. The line of the path, the position of the tree, have outranked the point around which they are set. This creates a pleasing composition.

Supposing, though, we’re not looking for a pleasing composition? There may be times when what I want to communicate is a sense of wrongness, of discomfort, of imbalance. For these kinds of image I would need to override my sense of good composition and deliberately place elements of a scene in the places that just feel wrong. Having made a rational evaluation of the different ways in which these images are wrong might help me, in the future, to take just the right kind of wrong image to invoke a sense of discomfort or imbalance in the viewer.