Now let's examine a couple of flawed images that have this in common—the principal subject has not been sufficiently isolated from its surroundings.
Candid portraits, especially those taken in the living room or kitchen, are notorious for intrusive elements in the background, but bad photos taken at festivals and concerts are equally common. I think we get so caught up in the excitement of the moment that it is easy to overlook something in the background. I can't use that excuse for the image below, as I was quite aware of the lights and other paraphernalia that's required for a live band.
The principal subject is nicely isolated from all the rest of the stuff because it is much brighter and more colorful. Isolation does not have to mean a barren setting, devoid of all context.
This is the second
issue of a website devoted to approaching photography as an art
form that (mostly) embraces the traditional canons of drawing and
painting—which is to say there is an emphasis here on line,
shape, color, light, perspective, texture, and so on. We appreciate
that there is much more to photography than that, but an awareness
of traditions— from Lascaux to Rauschenberg—may be
useful to beginning and intermediate photographers as they explore
and experiment. There will certainly be treatment of the craft
and technical aspects, but our focus will be on composition in
the very broadest sense of that term. There
are two basic questions we will pose—What do you point
your camera at? and Where do you stand? When one
addresses those questions many of the other decisions are fairly
well determined. We invite you to explore this issue and tell
us what you think. |
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OK,
you say, that was easy enough—the colors and texture and
subject matter all made it a simple, perhaps even obvious matter
to move in tight and shoot the pelican. I agree, but first she had
to see the pelican and that's what most of us would have missed.
A traditional
Puebloan bowl sitting on the wall would strike us as a set-up,
but a brightly-colored plastic pelican left behind by a child is
a different story. So what we are really talking about here is
both
seeing
and isolating.
I'm
not sure the former can be taught, but certainly the latter skill
can be learned, especially through a few bad examples.
The
trunk of this oak tree in a California park has some nice twists
and turns . . . but you'd never know it because of the way the
texture
of
the trunk merges with the background. Even in color the image is
barely any better. Objects that our eyes isolate in
the field often become indistinguishable when captured on film
(or digitally). I usually carry a green viewing filter when shooting
in black-and-white that helps me to see when tones merge, but I
don't expect most people
will.
The solution here: find a different tree!
Notice
the light fixture behind his hat. I was aware of it, but wasn't patient
enough to move, shoot more, or open up the lens to throw the lights
out of focus. I know I could have spoken to the musician on a
break and asked him to pose, but I didn't.
Here's
another flawed image, illustrating a common problem for anyone
interested in architectural work—getting
a clear shot of the subject without distracting cars, signs, power
lines, and even people. The image of the church is reasonably good
(a
bit distorted, but not too bad). But the white mail truck on the
left edge is terrible, as is the rear of the car in the foreground.
If the red car parked in front of the church were a light color,
that would be another disaster. It is the middle of a typical
day in Paterson, and there is no way the photographer could control
all the vehicles that are in his line of sight. He took a half
dozen shots,
waited
for the mail truck to move, and eventually got a barely-acceptable
image—nothing to brag about but a respectable "real
estate" photograph
of the oldest church in Paterson. On
the following page you'll see quite a different approach to
a similar subject, but here let's wrap up this section by noting
the importance of looking carefully for all bright objects in the
scene and for examining the edges of the image, and anything that
impinges on the principal subject. Then we'll turn to a few suggestions. 
