Basically, there are three things
to consider when composing a shot. The subject, the context
and noise.
01 The subject
The person, object or view that you are attempting to
capture.
02 The context
Anything else around the subject that is relevant to it
and enhances the message of the picture.
03 Noise
Anything around the subject that is irrelevant.
The idea of good composition is to
capture the subject in enough context to produce a powerful
image with as little noise in the shot as possible.
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Here, both the female
and the Roman ruins are the subject in the context
of the Tunisian desert. A closer shot could have
produced a view where the female was the subject
in the context of the Roman Ruins.
This far off point of
view causes the female and the pillars to merge
visually. The figure sits on a low slab, balancing
off the missing pillar and the other columns, through
their varying heights, take on the look of a family
group.
The distance also adds
to the silent tranquility of the scene.
Potential noise intruding
into this scene would include tourists wandering
in from the side or a Land Rover bumpping across
the desert behind.
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A female bowling is the subject of this shot, in
the context of an old traditional English pub.
The two men at the table to the left drinking and
the man standing to the left in the background are
all context, rather than secondary subjects.
The men drinking help establish exactly where we
are and the man to the rear is watching the wooden
skittles and focusing his (and our) attention on
the subject.
Additional people lining up to bowl (who were actually
there, but cropped out of shot) would have made
this shot cluttered.
Other potential noise would be things like extra
activities confusing the issue such as a game of
darts ensuing somehwere within the scene.
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This photograph shows the tail end of a carnival
as it reaches the end of its procession route. A
marshall and a Police biker are the primary and
secondary subjects respectively.
The radiant carnival float itself is merely part
of the context here. The first version of this shot
was a landscape scene including a burger van to
the left. This upset the dynamic of the shot and
made it too cluttered.
In this portrait version the road markings and
telephone wires (behind the street light) add to
the extreme persepctive. The street light itself
frames off the left side and points us back into
the centre of the scene.
On the other side, the top of the luminous float
draws a line of persepctive between the two men
and further emphasises the scale difference.
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