Composition examples

From Nikonians Wiki

This page offers some examples of composition which illustrate some of the principles very well.

This image, by Nikonian Jeremy King, powerfully demonstrates several compositional principles

First, the use of many apexes brings all the attention onto the foreground, despite what would otherwise be a cluttered background. Second, the primary interest, the child, benefits from the way our eyes are drawn to faces, and also the way our eyes are drawn to brightness over dark or dullness. Third, the way the colours of the child's dress are echoed in the red frame, which is the complementary colour of the green ropes, illustrates how echoing the primary interest with the secondary interest helps the composition.

If you visualise for a moment what the image would have been like with the child on a seat, with the same background, but none of the ropes or frame, you will see that this would have been a cluttered background with distracted from the main image. If you visualise it with the frame and ropes but without the child, it is clear that there would be no sufficient primary interest to hold the eye, which would then have endlessly wandered around the ropes without ever finding its place.

Finally, the photographer has cleverly used an external frame to place the child's face at exactly the interest point indicated by the Golden Section:

• This page was last modified on 25 June 2017, at 05:32.
• This page has been accessed 10,721 times.