Sherrys Designs: 02/01/2009

Researching Composistion I found this article which I thought was the perfect meaning of composistion. An effective image is one that commands attention and communicates some feeling to an audience. This requires alot of practice, experimentation and study.
A painter can position the elements where they want, whereas a photographer must search, find and organize visual elements within the camera viewfinder. Although a photographer can sometimes "arrange" objects in a natural environment such as leaves, this often results in a contrived looking picture. Nature is not perfect and variation within organization leads to greater interest. Effective composition of natural images is always a balance between arranging elements within the view finder and allowing a certain amount of disorder. The decision-making processes we make when taking a photograph starts first with being able to see possibilities. What we see depends on what we are interested in, what we are looking for and what our minds are prepared to show us. Seeing, in short, involves the mind and our memory as much as it does our eyes. Improving our visual sensitivity requires quieting our minds, relaxing, and preparing by learning as much as we can about our preferred subjects. Once we see things that are of interest, then we need to isolate parts of the scene, and organize the important visual elements within our viewfinder to effectively convey how we feel about them. This was from an article published by Robert Berdan.
http://photoinf.com/General/Robert_Berdan/Composition_and_the_Elements_of_Visual_Design.htm

Here are some rules I found for Nature Photography Composistion.
1. Clarify your message - you use lines, shapes, colors, tones, patterns, textures, balance, symmetry, depth, perspective, scale, and lighting to bring your images to life When taken the photo ask your self 2 questions: 1. What is the message of this photo? 2. What is the best way to communicate that message?
2. Keep it simple - take a "subtractive" approach to composition rather than an "additive" approach; instead of dwelling on what they can add to the composition, they focus on what can be removed in order to strengthen the composition.
3. Be patient - Good photo composition takes time; great photo composition cakes even more time
4.Fill the Frame-You can significantly strengthen many compositions by zooming in as much as your lenses allow or, if possible, getting closer to your subject. Photographic compositions are weakened when important subject matter is too small to see.
5. Consider Verticles-Consider whether a vertical or a horizontal composition will be most attractive in each situation. You can enliven your nature photography if you consciously take more verticals!
6.Find Lines- Horizontal and vertical lines characteristically have a static appearance in nature photos, whereas diagonal lines frequently arc where the action is. Diagonals are dynamic!
a. One type or diagonal line is known as a "leading line," A leading line may extend from the proximity of any of the four corners of a photo toward the middle of the image or toward a significant feature in the image.
b.Curved lines add aesthetic appeal to nature photos. In particular, S-curves frequently appear beautiful to the eye. S-curves in nature include winding rivers, curled tree branches, sinuous vines, swirling clouds, and slithering snakes
7. Place subject off center You can often produce a more interesting image by placing the main subject somewhere other than the center of the image. All easy way to keep this in mind is to use "the rule of thirds.