Balance in Composition

Hello everybody,

when a new photographer tries to work on improving his/her composition skills and searches the web, it is very likely to hit many pages talking about the rule-of-thirds or even the golden ratio. This is exactly what is it happening to me.

Another composition technique I came across to, teaches how to balance the element in the frame. If I remember correctly, you achieve balance by assigning a weight to every element according to its importance, size, contrast and so on. After you are clear with the weight of all elements, you place them in such a way, that the frame gets to an equilibrium by putting heavy elements away from the center.

To me, it looks like a very advanced technique. What do you thing? Are you using it? Why is it that difficult to find resources on the web talking about it?

Thank you for every comment

Balance is indeed important, and is probably a better guide than the rule of thirds.

In my opinion, balance should be considered as a basic, rather than advanced, concept. Perhaps it may be complex to analyse in terms of words, but a photograph is a visual image, and may be understood instinctively or intuitively in a direct and immediate way.

One concept I try to keep in mind is the balancing of a small, eye-catching feature against a larger, less bold area. Though of differing sizes, these may have equal weight. This may seem similar in some ways to the rule of thirds, but operates with a different underlying mechanism.

Regards,
Peter

Vizzo said:

If I remember correctly, you achieve balance by assigning a weight to every element according to its importance, size, contrast and so on. After you are clear with the weight of all elements, you place them in such a way, that the frame gets to an equilibrium by putting heavy elements away from the center.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about that "putting heavy elements away from the center". My perception is that first one determines what the center of attention is. Or, exactly what is the subject of the photograph. Now, that may or may not be in the physical center, but it's sort of like Rome and all roads lead to it.

Everything else is either a road leading to Rome, or it shouldn't be there. Sort of an engineering thing about putting together a composition and the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy works well. Simplify the composition as much as possible by removing as much as possible. Or, as Einstein said: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

A wordier description:

"Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand. Arrangements such as the layout of a city or building, a set of tools, a display of merchandise, the verbal exposition of facts or ideas, or a painting or piece of music are called orderly when an observer or listener can grasp their overall structure and the ramification of the structure in some detail. Order makes it possible to focus on what is alike and what is different, what belongs together and what is segregated. When nothing superfluous is included and nothing indispensable left out , one can understand the interrelation of the whole and its parts, as well as the hierarchic scale of importance and power by which some structural features are dominant, others subordinate." -- Abstract from "Entropy and Art" by Rudolf Arnheim [emphasis added].

The equilibrium isn't so much that heavy elements are put away from the center, as that they are all concentrated at the center of attention and everything else should draw a viewer's attention to that center. Everything else is excess complexity and a distraction that should be removed to provide the simplest and most ordered composition possible.

Vizzo said:

Another composition technique I came across to, teaches how to balance the element in the frame. If I remember correctly, you achieve balance by assigning a weight to every element according to its importance, size, contrast and so on. After you are clear with the weight of all elements, you place them in such a way, that the frame gets to an equilibrium by putting heavy elements away from the center.

To me, it looks like a very advanced technique. What do you thing? Are you using it? Why is it that difficult to find resources on the web talking about it?

Click to expand...

I don't think one should categorise these techniques as advanced or beginners unless one is going on a scholarly exercise on art and art appreciation.

What you detail above sounds very mechanical, very mathematic, very intellectual - I don't approach my photos or other peoples' photos like this. I see photos as a visual experience, a subjective and an art thing, one that evokes the "heart", rather than the cold logic of maths or mechanics.

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.blogspot.com

'There are a whole range of greys and colours - from
the photographer who shoots everything in iA / green
AUTO to the one who shoots Manual Everything. There
is no right or wrong - there are just instances of
individuality and individual choice.'

I am indeed a mathematician...

Back to serious mode: I take photography as an art, and as such I don't want to be/feel constrained to rules or models. That said, I have to admit that part of my interest into photography is to try to understand how the brain works when looking at pictures. What does it like? How is it a picture parsed? Why is a picture more appealing than another?

In the attempt to understand this, I was attracted by the model of the balance, because it may be a (simple -istic) way to estimate the concept of beauty as understood by the brain. This is why I have called this an advanced technique (anyway, also in normal terms it is surely harder to apply than the rule-of-thirds).

As much I am interested into this matter, I surely hope that it won't be ever possible to define a beautiful picture by evaluating scientific factors. If so, the camera could give you an immediate numeric feedback while you are zooming and composing. How boring will that be?

AnandaSim said:

What you detail above sounds very mechanical, very mathematic, very intellectual - I don't approach my photos or other peoples' photos like this. I see photos as a visual experience, a subjective and an art thing, one that evokes the "heart", rather than the cold logic of maths or mechanics.

Click to expand...

Well said Amanda.

Balance has come up throughout this thread. The only balance I look for is a blend or balance of technical proficiency with a composition based artistic eye.

Interesting posts guys.

Peace
Peter

http://www.peteranthonyphotography.com

Vizzo said:

I am indeed a mathematician...

Click to expand...

Vizzo said:

Back to serious mode: I take photography as an art, and as such I don't want to be/feel constrained to rules or models. That said, I have to admit that part of my interest into photography is to try to understand how the brain works when looking at pictures. What does it like? How is it a picture parsed? Why is a picture more appealing than another?

Click to expand...

It can be simple

• Make it big / Fill the frame

• Catch the viewer's eye, then manage the eye's subsequent path

• Tell a story, give it context

Vizzo said:

In the attempt to understand this, I was attracted by the model of the balance, because it may be a (simple -istic) way to estimate the concept of beauty as understood by the brain. This is why I have called this an advanced technique (anyway, also in normal terms it is surely harder to apply than the rule-of-thirds).

Click to expand...

I am not quite sure whether if a technique is harder to apply that it also requires work to read the photo.

--



Ananda
http://anandasim.blogspot.com

'There are a whole range of greys and colours - from
the photographer who shoots everything in iA / green
AUTO to the one who shoots Manual Everything. There
is no right or wrong - there are just instances of
individuality and individual choice.'

I'm sure this seems at odds with the search for perfection, but I just look through the viewfinder and frame that way.,

If it looks right in the viewfinder it usually looks right in the image.

Let your brain work out what it likes. That's what it's there for. Don't be analytical - that's photography by numbers.

Go for how the image feels when framing it.

The expression "look into your heart" comes to mind.

The "rules" are guidelines you can employ, but I'm not a fan of rules.

Rules are useful when you're constructing formal scenes with controlled lighting. For everything else there's just instinct.

The balance idea sounds like a good way to get a headache, not to mention missing the shot while you're busy solving the equations. Sod that.

--
StephenG

Pentax K100D
Fuji S3 Pro
Fuji S9600

Hi StephenG,

I also don't think too much (at least not mathematically) for taking a shot, I just wonder how the brain works when you look at it, after having taken it

Many photographers say: "compose such that the photography leads your eyes into your main subject". Don't you wonder how the eyes are lead? Typical examples are lines converging towards the subject, but why is it so? What is the process behind it?

Again, this has nothing to do with the art of taking pictures per se (my hobby), it is only another way to think about photography as a subhobby

If you are hoping to create a beautiful photograph and you are treating photography as a SUBHOBBY then put your camera down NOW. You will not create anything but mundane, run-of-the-mill images. I don't know what level you are at in Mathematics, but I am sure, to get to that level, it took a lot of hard work and devotion to that subject to get there. If you treat Photography as a hobby then that is all it will be. In order to create beautiful images it takes just as much hard work and devotion as did your maths training. How the brain interprets visual imagery, nobody really knows. Neurologists know that the lens, along with the iris, focuses an image on the retina. The retina contains 126,000,000 photoreceptors in EACH eye. 120,000,00 Rods, 6,000,000 cones. The Photon values collected from these 252,000,000 receptors are transmitted, by the optic nerves, to the visual cortex of the brain. By the way, the neuronic material of the Retina is the only brain neurons outside the skull. The brain is often being compared to a computer, NOT so. A computer processes billions of operations/second to determine a particular outcome. It has been determined that the brain can accomplish most of its decisions in 100 operations! How this is accomplished, nobody knows. Your question as to how the brain determines if a photographic composition is JUST RIGHT, nobody knows. My opinion, and this is only MY opinion, is that it is, in some part, intuitive. I am 74 years old, I have tried to teach a number of people how to take an interesting photograph. You know what, I can look at a series of their photos and find a few that are composed fairly well and would look pretty good printed. I have them go over the same series and tell me which ones look different, sets them apart, from the rest. They tell me they all look the same to them! This is what I mean when I say intuitive. You can learn all the technical aspects of photography, whether you can learn to SEE, I don't know. There are Thousands of great photographers, there are billions of lousy photographers. Take a look around these forums. When I bought a Les Paul guitar, years ago, I thought, now I can play just like Les. Didn't happen. I went back to my old Gretsch.

Vizzo said:

Hi StephenG,

I also don't think too much (at least not mathematically) for taking a shot, I just wonder how the brain works when you look at it, after having taken it

Many photographers say: "compose such that the photography leads your eyes into your main subject". Don't you wonder how the eyes are lead? Typical examples are lines converging towards the subject, but why is it so? What is the process behind it?

Again, this has nothing to do with the art of taking pictures per se (my hobby), it is only another way to think about photography as a subhobby

Click to expand...

How the brain creates its concept of "reality" from various signals, including those from the eyes, is a very interesting subject. Art from any visual media, such as photography, has to deal with that. The good news is that no matter what you do wrong, somebody will actually like it! The bad news is that no matter what you do right there will be lots of people who don't like it...

Here's an interesting bit of stuff on visual perception:

http://www.zeiss.de/c1256fba0032fcc7/Contents-Frame/8310a9b093f59d23c125720c0035253a

"Is what we see reality or is it "only" the fabrication of our brain? The latter has now been shown to be true. For vision, this means: we cannot objectively see the real world."

As photographers our work is in helping people's brain to fabricate a reality that we've designed. Your interest in how their brain works is well chosen!

The optical processing of the brain evolved primarily as a survival trait.

Important functions for survival are to recognize patterns and symmetry and also to recognize the breaking of patterns and symmetry. As in "that doesn't look like a branch to me" or "those look like claws".

Likewise we evolved colour differentiation because it helps keep up alive as in "there's something orange in that bush" or the ever popular "snow isn't yellow".

Put simply, the better you are at this the less likely your species will be at the bottom of a food chain.

We pick up these patterns because we've evolved to trigger on these things.

--
StephenG

Pentax K100D
Fuji S3 Pro
Fuji S9600

charleyd said:

If you are hoping to create a beautiful photograph and you are treating photography as a SUBHOBBY then put your camera down NOW. You will not create anything but mundane, run-of-the-mill images. I don't know what level you are at in Mathematics, but I am sure, to get to that level, it took a lot of hard work and devotion to that subject to get there. If you treat Photography as a hobby then that is all it will be. In order to create beautiful images it takes just as much hard work and devotion as did your maths training.

Click to expand...

Except that is simply not a valid perception of photography as a "subhobby"! First, it isn't necessary that someone ever produce a world class superphoto in order to enjoy the benefits of photography. Even "mundane, run-of-the-mill images" can have value, and can produce great benefits for the photographer. (Every truly great photographer initially was inspired by the mundane pictures they produced...)

The hard work you mention is what it takes to consistently make great pictures. But as has been said elsewhere, while nobody ever accidentally paints a Rembrant, it is relatively common that great photographs are total accidents.

charleyd said:

I have tried to teach a number of people how to take an interesting photograph. You know what, I can look at a series of their photos and find a few that are composed fairly well and would look pretty good printed. I have them go over the same series and tell me which ones look different, sets them apart, from the rest. They tell me they all look the same to them! This is what I mean when I say intuitive. You can learn all the technical aspects of photography, whether you can learn to SEE, I don't know.

Click to expand...

First, a person has to have that particular talent. Those who have a lot of it might be "seeing" the difference by the time they are age 4. Those who don't may never be able to learn how. But perhaps the "average" person doesn't learn it particularly fast or by themselves, and if coached by an inspiring instructor (which requires a different set of talents, that again varies from individual to individual) they can learn (something).

I'm a few years younger than you, and I'm well aware that over the decades I've learned a great deal about what makes photographs more or less appealing to me. At 20, with either a painting (which I absolutely have no talent for) I could pick out ones that I liked, and all the rest had the "they're all the same" character that you mention. Photographs were the same. At 65 not much has changed with paintings! (Though, after all these decades, it has finally started to make sense to me what Picasso was doing with Cubism!)

However, I've been doing photography for most of the decades between age 20 and 65, and my understanding of what I do or don't like is now vastly more refined than it was 40 or 50 years ago. That's not intuitive, it's a learned skill that takes advantage of innate talent. (I still can't paint, because I simply do not have the talents required. The same is true for playing musical instruments... it isn't going to happen.) I can look at photographs and bore people to death describing exactly what it is I like or dislike about them.

charleyd said:

There are Thousands of great photographers, there are billions of lousy photographers. Take a look around these forums. When I bought a Les Paul guitar, years ago, I thought, now I can play just like Les. Didn't happen. I went back to my old Gretsch.

Click to expand...

You are never going to be able to accidentally play even one song the way Les Paul could do almost any song... But even those thousands of great photographers sometimes produce results only by accident, and certainly those billions of lousy photographers are producing a few hundreds or thousands of great photographs daily (along with the millions that reflect just how lousy they are).

Apaflo:
We do appreciate YOUR opinion on this most intriguing subject.

The only thing I try to do is to have a striking focal point in my photographs and cut out any other clutter.

If I'm taking a picture of the sky, I try to cut out the clutter like the street lamps in my community.

I've moved on from wide-angle, all-encompassing shots to closer, more intimate and cropped views of things in my photographs - less of the panoramic shot trying to squeeze all of the park into a single picture - more shots of what's interesting in the park ... flowers ... insects ... people ... structures .. etc.

I like the below photo of mine because I don't try to capture the whole fish. I just focus on the eyes and the facial expression.





--

Overall I can't say enough positive things about this camera. Sure it would be nice if it had HD video or a higher resolution screen but those aren't required to take fantastic pictures.

TechOutsider said:

The only thing I try to do is to have a striking focal point in my photographs and cut out any other clutter.

Click to expand...

Entropy and art... the same applies to communicating via written text! I write paragraphs and almost get it across, and you say it all in one short sentence.

And that picture does indeed demonstrate your ability, as did the text.

I think I have expressed myself badly and you did not get my point: Photography is a true hobby for me. The subhobby is to try analytically to understand (or at least ask myself) how the brain perceives pictures. I don't think that this is too bad.

Photography is an art to me, I leave the analytical thinking to my profession and to my subhobbies

This thread really resonates with me! I'm a 60 year old retired computer scientist without much training or apparent talent in the arts. Since I've always had an interest in the pure sciences, the technical aspects of photography are not much of a mystery to me. But training my eyes and brain as to what makes a good photographic image has been, and continues to be, a fascinating process. Looking back through several years of images, I can see that my images are improving both technically and compositionally. I have learned that the brain is VERY selective in what you "see" and pulls input from all your senses to generate what you experience. The camera captures exactly what is in its visual field and none of the other inputs you experience. I'm slowly training myself to pay close attention to what is in the viewfinder, as opposed to what I experienced that caused my to want to take an image. A photographer friend has recommended reading and doing the exercises in Betty Edwards book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".

Art

Thanks .

Here's another example for you guys.

Not the whole garden, just the little plant.

apaflo said:

TechOutsider said:

The only thing I try to do is to have a striking focal point in my photographs and cut out any other clutter.

Click to expand...

Entropy and art... the same applies to communicating via written text! I write paragraphs and almost get it across, and you say it all in one short sentence.

And that picture does indeed demonstrate your ability, as did the text.

Click to expand...

--

Overall I can't say enough positive things about this camera. Sure it would be nice if it had HD video or a higher resolution screen but those aren't required to take fantastic pictures.