Tutorial Bandstand: anatomy of a composition.

Musicman

Musicman

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Rob Telford
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First up a flat-on record image with an FD 17mm f/4. It's a sort of safety shot, stood bang on the axis of symmetry of the bandstand.

20120824_0011.jpg


Portrait format with the camera held exactly horizontal keeps the verticals vertical, but it leaves a lot of foreground. This can be cropped out to square.

20120824_0011-square.jpg


Problems with this.

1) it's a bit dull, especially with the grey sky. Even though the light is pretty soft, it's still directly behind me and not helping out much with light and shade.

2) doesn't make enough of the trees. If I had a stepladder, a bit more height might allow me to get trees behind the bandstand and crop out the sky, but I don't.

Still, it's in the can. I can start to think about better placing the bandstand in context.
 
I move off to the side in search of something else.

20120824_0012.jpg



This is much better. I've got some context of the park in the background.

The bandstand is set off to the side about a third of the way in and there's a strong horizontal line about a third up. Rule of thirds in action with the key element bang on the intersection of two thirds lines.

There's a little foreground interest with the bench and grass. Leaves from the nearer trees are filling the blank space of the sky fairly well.

I almost left it there.

However, the bandstand is a bit small in the frame. Need to do something about that.

[continues]
 
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Moving closer with the 17mm was going to open up the sky too much.

Time to switch to a different lens - an FD 35mm f/2.0 SSC which gives me the equivalent of 70mm on a full frame. It's a lovely lens, wickedly sharp.

This gets me here

20120824_0015.jpg


The bandstand is certainly larger in the frame, but I've lost the leaves at the top of the frame and my nice off-centre composition. I lower my viewpoint a little, to bring them back into the sky, but that just highlights another problem...

That bench is now less providing some foreground interest, but more a distraction. And there's the bin - a bit naff. Thinking about it, that was a problem on the previous version. Moving my viewpoint down is only going to make it worse.

I need to move again.

[continues]
 
20120824_0016.jpg


Thankfully I've lost the bin. Leaves are working well in the sky.

Sadly I've cut off a bit of the steps on the left, but I'd need to move backward to get it in, and that would lead to some of the leaves at the top of frame obscuring the top of the bandstand.

[continues]
 
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Circle round a bit more, pull back, flip to landscape

20120824_0017.jpg


OK, it's a bit of a centralised composition, but the planter is better foreground element than a bin. Nice foliage behind. As a record shot, it works pretty well.

Still not what I was looking for, but I was beginning to think the version in Post #3 was going to be as good as I could get for a more interesting photograph.

I went off for a few minutes to take some pictures of trees and decided to head off, but made my way out through a different direction to the one I'd come in at. Still had a niggling thought that there was something better to be had. I'd largely discounted this side as it was facing directly toward the sun.

As luck would have it, though, the cloudy softbox was working its magic and just then things started falling into place

20120824_0029.jpg


Once again, I had the strong horizontal line and the bandstand placed at thirds, but with the planter on the opposite side of the frame, it was in its own space and not competing for the same space like the bench and bin had been.

The trees were providing cover for the sky, controlling the bright tones, and, better, they were framing a pool of light on the bandstand.

I'm never entirely satisfied, though...
 
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Pulled back a little and swung round to the left and I struck gold by placing a tree into the scene

20120824_0032-4to3.jpg


As a much stronger element than the planter, its silhouette provides a balance to the bandstand on the right hand side of the frame.

Everything else I was looking for in the earlier photos was there, the placement of elements on thirds lines, the light was on the primary subject, with the surrounding tones all green or dark. The path leads the eye nicely into the scene. Handy figures sitting on a bench to the left of the tree in just the right place for your eye to discover them once you've taken everything else in.

Once I had the image in Lightroom I tightened up the crop from 4 x 3 to 8.5 x 11 to take out an extraneous planter on the left hand side

20120824_0032-prePS.jpg


Here's a diagram of the main compositional elements.

20120824_0032-grid.jpg


The red lines are the thirds grid. You can see how the tree and central axis of the bandstand fall on the vertical lines, while the lower of the horizontal lines is traced by the tree/path interface and the upper one bounds both the top of the bandstand and marks the start of the turn of the tree trunk toward the upper left hand corner of the frame.

The yellow square shows the bounds of a frame within the frame bounded by right edge of the frame, the tree trunk, its canopy and its shadow on the ground. The bandstand occupies that nicely, like a picture within a picture.

I think there's a further symmetry provided by the tree branch in the top left and the path in the bottom right both leading diagonals in from their corners of the frame, indicated by the blue lines.

A little final polish to bring out some texture on the tree trunk and tweak the contrast and we have the final result.


Southwark Park Bandstand by cybertect, on Flickr

Final note: While I am pretty happy with it, I'm not going to claim this is a compositional masterpiece.

The purpose of this piece is more to lead you through the way I'm thinking as I'm working a subject, looking for opportunities, discarding some ideas and attempting to create a synthesis of everything that seemed to work within a cohesive framework.
 
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Good posts - what people sometimes miss (me definitely included) is not just looking at how others compose, but the thought process that they go through to get to that composition.

Thanks - it's a help to me, and i'm sure for others too!
 
That was really interesting Rob.:clap: I always find how others compose a shot to be really eye-opening. And I also like the shot.(y)
 
This is great Rob, and it made me smile a bit, as it kind of mirrors my thought process approach to capturing an image, I think of it as a 'terrier' process, worrying the subject , constantly nipping and biting until it comes good.

This is one thread it would be worth pointing newcomers, particularly to landscapes, when they ask questions about composition.
 
Thanks for making the effort and taking the time to write a very interesting and thoughtful article. I'll certainly have this in mind next time I'm trying to do something more than take a documentary shot.

Nice one Rob!

Chris
 
Very helpful post, describes perfectly the difference between a snap and a photograph.
 
Fantastic post :clap::clap:

This was a pleasure to read Rob, especially with all the explanations with the what and why and photo's to back them up. A subject most of us would have snapped and walked on. A post like this reminds us with a little thought and care, a simple snap can easily become a pleasant photograph.
 
Thanks for the positive replies.

As I think I've said before in this forum, for me the fun in photography is as much about the process of taking a picture as it is about the end result, per se. In a case like this, getting everything to fall into place in the frame is like unlocking a complex puzzle.

Now I should mention that normally I don't shoot as many frames as I would here along the way (especially if I'm using film instead of digital!) but I'll be framing up in the viewfinder or mentally picturing it before I even raise the camera to my eye. I used to do a lot of sketching when I was younger it makes you develop a skill for previsualisation before committing to 20 or 30 minutes of drawing. Partly why I like using prime lenses is that it's easier to know in advance what you're going to see.
 
What an awesome guide. Kept me up reading last night. Tried using the theory today. Many thanks
 
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