A Vertical Rut ?

Image 1

A Rambling Compositional Self-Examination

Today I was backing up the last three images that I had processed and suddenly realized that I could be in a compositional rut.

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I have always been a fan of depth of field, but I couldn't miss that, without any forethought, those three images all followed the same compositional theme. They all showed a distant barn, but with the focus on an interesting foreground. In two I highlighted the contrast between the dusting of snow and the protruding remnants of the autumn leaves and grass. The other pictured the field before the snow had FINALLY fallen. In all cases the distant barn is, to varying degrees, a point of interest, but the real focus is the detail in the foreground. I like all three images but I had to worry that I was suffering from a worrisome lack of creative imagination.

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I tell myself that I let the scene dictate the composition, but sometimes its possible to rely on the same old tricks. A survey of images on the internet shows that the vast majority are shot in horizontal or "landscape" orientation, but for some reason I seem drawn to the vertical. Perhaps I need to create a new year's resolution to change things up, but first I needed to understand the scope of the problem. I started by scanning through my winter photographs from the last few years. I couldn't actually review all of my images but rather studied those on which I had chosen to devote significant editing efforts. After this critical review I came to a few, not so startling, conclusions. 

 

• Yes, I have a fascination with foregrounds, but I continue to believe that, when attention begins within an interesting foreground, the viewer starts with a sense of being present and grounded in the image. After that we can drawn the eye anywhere else in the scene while the feet remain firmly planted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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  Just a Barn?

  Whether it be the pasture in the foreground, the mountains seen in the distance or a combination of layers of interesting detail, I have always believed in the importance of placing the predominant subject of a photograph within context. As I reviewed my select winter images I was happy to discover that I could find almost no examples of a barn, a covered bridge or barnyard animal that was portrayed as an isolated "thing". Instead of finding pictures that I could describe only as, "This is a picture of a pretty barn.", I was happy to find most with fuller stories, "This is a picture of a barn in the mist at the end of pasture bordered by a wire fence".  It is all about context. 
  
  
   
• I do tend to compose many of my images within a vertical "portrait" format to emphasize the foreground, but this emphasis does not require a portrait orientation and many of my images are grounded nicely with a landscape perspective. Manipulation of lighting, focus and subject can be highly effective at drawing attention to the foreground regardless of the orientation of the image.
  
  　

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  Aspect Ratio

  In fact I was relieved to discover that I don't shoot predominately in the portrait orientation. This is where Lightroom came to the rescue. Within the metadata portion of the Library Filter it is possible to display "Aspect Ratio". When applied to my subset of edited images I was surprised to discover that only 45% where shot in Portrait, not even a majority! This group of images included many from more than ten years ago and it occurred to me that my artistic sensibilities might have matured over the years. I then looked at the Aspect Ratio of the images captured over just the most recent couple of years and discovered that the percentage of portraits was exactly the same, well actually dropping to 44.7%. Not much change in my "sensibilities". This may be seen to confirm my lack of artistic growth or may demonstrate that I have found my compositional sweet spot. At any rate, I can say emphatically that I DON"T shoot solely in the vertical.
  
  
  
• Ok, I must be honest. One reason that I have so many landscape images is that I am always thinking about my next calendar. The monthly images for my New England Reflections calendar are always in landscape and so after shooting a scene that cries out for portrait orientation, I will often rotate the camera and search for an effective "calendar view". 
  
  
  
  Apart from calendar shots, there is great value in forcing yourself to capture images in both orientations. You never know when a client might decide that your picture is lovely, but that it's too bad that what he really needed was the shot in the other orientation.  Since most people shoot in landscape, the standard rule is, "The best time to shoot in portrait mode is right after you shoot in landscape". For me the rule is true, but the exact opposite.

Glad I Shot the Landscape

This is a startling amount of ramblings, being triggered only by a chance viewing of three similar images, but if you take anything away it should be:

1. Context is important.
2. Foregrounds are often important.
3. And if that means shooting more verticals, then whose counting.
4. Except me.

Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com
603-363-8338
 

Escaping your Camera's Dictatorial Viewfinder

Compositional Pre-Visualization

Gulf Brook, Chesterfield, NH

The Usual Lame Apology

The holiday season is always a hectic time for photographers. For me this year has been especially challenging. In addition to the usual rush of last minute Christmas orders and the annual  struggle to get my calendar to all the places where it is needed, I have the additional strain of remaking and moving my websites. I created my primary web gallery about 6 or 7 years ago from scratch using Microsoft's Front Page editor. The site has been an easily accessible repository for over two thousand of my images, but it is embarrassingly out of date. Today services like SmugMug and Zenfolio provide easily managed photo gallery sites with beautiful designs and an amazing collection of features. I've meant to update but I never seemed to have the time. Now I have been forced from my lethergy by the fact that my web host is going out of the hosting business. I have no choice but to move by the end of the year, and I also have to find a new home for the Chesterfield Conservation Commission web site. 

My Current Front Page Design

After much research, and the advice from many of my friends at the New England Photography Guild, I decided to go with Zenfolio. It has been exciting, but laborious, to move thousands of my images to the new platform and I am also working though a long list of design decision. My old portfolio images are of fairly low resolution. They are adequate for a rough archive of my work, but won't show well given the capabilities of their new home. I have just started the process of re-editing my favorite pictures to show best on the new site and be available for on-line sales. it will take months to get all the images up to standard. My hope is to get everything reasonably presentable by the end of the month, when the lights go out at my old home.  Hopefully, within a few days, partridgebrookreflections.com will have a whole new look.

The real reason for sharing my strain is to serve as a long winded apology for what will be a short and simple blog this week. My one goal is to remind folks about the size of their viewfinder and how overly tight framing of a composition within the constraints of the viewfinder can limit how your images can be presented when it comes to printing.

Going Standard

Pocket Full of Rye, Keene, N

I do my own matting and framing and can cut my mats to fit any  picture size, but when I am producing matted images for sale in stores I usually try to adjust my composition to fit a few standard sizes. This makes it easier and less expensive for my customers to find frames for the pictures. This doesn't work for all images. Some pictures loose there impact if confined to an arbitrary framing, but for the most part images can work well within just a few standard options. For larger prints I typically will use either a 12x16 or an 12x18 print. These two sizes end up being mated to fairly standard 20"x24" or 18"x24" dimensions. I typically size my "8x10" images close to 7"x10" since this fits more evenly in a standard 11"x14" frame. Now that I have started producing my own note cards, I am also printing more in a standard 4"x6" format.

Getting the Composition Right in the Digital Camera

All of this careful sizing depends on getting an image in the camera that can eventually be cropped to a desired aspect ratio and this is the simple point of today's blog. When you use the viewfinder as your compositional frame, you may be restricting your options later to crop the image in the best way.

12x18 & 4x6 Fit the Viewfinder

The standard "full" digital sensor matches the size of 35 mm film at 36mm x24mm yeilding an aspect ratio of 1 : 1.5 in the viewfinder. That is, the long dimension is 50% longer than the short. This matches the aspect ratio of 12"x18" and 4"x6" compositions, but if you frame tightly within the viewfinder you may find you are limited when it comes to cropping to other ratios. For example, a 12"x16" is at a ratio

12x16

of 1 : 1.33. For illustration, I have included a number of frames with the different aspect ratios superimposed on a standard viewfinder, but the simple point is to consider how you might eventually display an image when you compose in the camera. Today's digital cameras have lots of resolution and broadening the initial composition is

7x10

unlikely to significantly degrade the quality of the image. Once again the best image in the digital camera may not be the one that looks the best in your camera's viewfinder. The secret is to pull back from the strict 1:1.5 ratio imposed by the viewfinder. To apply your own visual cropping and make sure that everything you need for that ideal composition is safely within the frame. The image directly from the camera may well include distracting elements, but that is what cropping is for.

Final Points

Just a couple of additional points. First the 1 : 1.5 ratio holds for most of the crop sensor cameras as well. Canon's usual 1.6 crop sensor has an aspect ratio of approximately 1 : 1.58. Finally, I should point out that my compositional limitations are often saved by the fact that, like many DSLRs, the viewfinder on my Canon D Mark II only shows 95% of the image that will be recorded by the sensor. I can always go to Live View to see the full image, but sometimes it's good to have that little bit of buffer to protect me from my natural tendency to want to see the perfect image in that nasty, dictatorial viewfinder.