Composition exploration – the basics

After a few weeks of very technical emails, which I muddled through with varying degrees of success, I was pleased that A Year With My Camera has started a 4 week focus on composition.  I have studied it in the past, but Emma presented the first week in a way that I had never considered – focussing on the background, foreground and subject. 

My previous thoughts on composition have been guided by geometry, and looking at the relative heights of the different elements of the image, so I initially found the descriptions of ‘more foreground’ or ‘more background’ a little confusing.  I found it more helpful to think about the percentage of the frame that the background or foreground should fill (‘more’ meaning a higher percentage). The challenge was to take 5 images, and focus on moving your feet to achieve them rather than moving your feet!

A balanced image

A lovely, though boring, image of Geoff on the path beside the Kelvin river.

Mostly subject

Up close in the Glasgow Botanic Gardens glasshouses on a beautiful flower from a plant native to Indonesia. 

Mostly background

Again beside the river, the mossy stump is the subject and while I usually would have framed the image to crop our the path in front, I deliberately left a little in the corner of the image to clearly have some foreground. 

 

Mostly foreground

A windswept Geoff on the upper deck on the ferry out to Lerwick, Shetland Islands (and the wind was impacting me as well, hence he is a little blurry!  The sunse over Aberdeen was spectacular. 

No foreground

I guess a flatlay is a good example of no foreground, but I am not sure how technically these are shot – but the opposite of a flatlay is looking straight up, so I flipped about the screen on my camera so I could see the shot and took the image straight up in the Glasgow Botanic Gardens glasshouses