gardenersassistant
Veteran Member
This is an invitation to discuss any aspects of composition as it relates to close-up/macro. I'll start.
Composition matters a lot to me, for my own close-up/macro images, for reasons I've explained below. More generally though, I think composition may not matter at all in some cases, and may be quite low on the list of priorities in some other cases. And sometimes, like for me, it can matter a lot.
Horses for courses.
For identification purposes composition might not matter at all. As I understand it (which is not much btw), identifying species can depend on the details of a particular part of the animal or plant. I don't think composition has any role to play in such cases.
It seems to me that the big draw of close-up/macro for a lot of people is the way it lets you see wonderful details of shape, colour and texture in nature's creations that you can't see with the naked eye. It's nice when someone manages to capture and display that sort of detail in the context of an attractively composed image, but I can't feel that composition is a key factor, certainly not in my enjoyment of highly detailed images.
For my part, I photograph mainly insects and other invertebrates and flowers, buds, seed pods etc. In both areas I am next to useless at identifying species, and my images are fairly small and, especially with invertebrates, they lack fine detail. My aim for a long time now has been to try to create what I think of as "pretty pictures"; images, based on photographs, that appeal to my eye in terms of the shapes, colours, light and textures they contain and the way these elements fit together, which is what I think of, for my own images, as composition.
That is of course a very personal approach, based on my personal preferences, and it is very much a matter of intuition and trial and error. There are of course well recognised guidelines that can be helpful, such as those discussed in these articles, which I read a few days ago to remind myself about these guidelines:
photographypro.com
fstoppers.com
fstoppers.com
petapixel.com
Although a lot of the examples were architecture, landscape, street and people photography I found them all an interesting read and I can see most or all of them being potentially useful for composing close-up/macro captures. That said, apart from the first bullet point below, personally I'm not really conscious of that sort of guideline when composing captures and cropping images to get to a composition I'm comfortable with. For example:
How about you?
Composition matters a lot to me, for my own close-up/macro images, for reasons I've explained below. More generally though, I think composition may not matter at all in some cases, and may be quite low on the list of priorities in some other cases. And sometimes, like for me, it can matter a lot.
Horses for courses.
For identification purposes composition might not matter at all. As I understand it (which is not much btw), identifying species can depend on the details of a particular part of the animal or plant. I don't think composition has any role to play in such cases.
It seems to me that the big draw of close-up/macro for a lot of people is the way it lets you see wonderful details of shape, colour and texture in nature's creations that you can't see with the naked eye. It's nice when someone manages to capture and display that sort of detail in the context of an attractively composed image, but I can't feel that composition is a key factor, certainly not in my enjoyment of highly detailed images.
For my part, I photograph mainly insects and other invertebrates and flowers, buds, seed pods etc. In both areas I am next to useless at identifying species, and my images are fairly small and, especially with invertebrates, they lack fine detail. My aim for a long time now has been to try to create what I think of as "pretty pictures"; images, based on photographs, that appeal to my eye in terms of the shapes, colours, light and textures they contain and the way these elements fit together, which is what I think of, for my own images, as composition.
That is of course a very personal approach, based on my personal preferences, and it is very much a matter of intuition and trial and error. There are of course well recognised guidelines that can be helpful, such as those discussed in these articles, which I read a few days ago to remind myself about these guidelines:
12 Composition Guidelines That Every Photographer Should Use
This photography composition tutorial has 12 easy to understand tips to get you composing with your camera the way that the pros do.
photographypro.com
The Ultimate Guide to Composition - Part One: Just Say "No"keh
Note: This is Part One. For Part Two: Beyond the Basics, click here. Composition – it’s perhaps one of the most important elements of photography. And with today’s technological marvels in lenses, it’s an even easier thing to forget – especially when bokehliciousis is so much more fun to talk...
fstoppers.com
The Ultimate Guide to Composition - Part Two: Beyond the Basics
This is the second part of The Ultimate Guide to Composition. Part One can be found here. Now that we’ve covered some of the more common rules/guidelines that are present in photography and painting, let’s move on to some of the more abstract concepts and theories including framing devices and...
fstoppers.com
28 Composition Techniques That Will Improve Your Photos
28 different techniques you can use while doing photography that will greatly improve your compositions and photos.
petapixel.com
Although a lot of the examples were architecture, landscape, street and people photography I found them all an interesting read and I can see most or all of them being potentially useful for composing close-up/macro captures. That said, apart from the first bullet point below, personally I'm not really conscious of that sort of guideline when composing captures and cropping images to get to a composition I'm comfortable with. For example:
- For a single subject, such as an insect, I tend to have more space in front of it than behind it, unless it is more or less pointing towards the camera, in which case I'll most likely place it centrally. This is the case for flowers as well as little animals.
I tend to have more space above a single subject than beneath it, unless it is hanging upside down, in which case I may have more space below it than above it. - If there is something(s) else significant in the frame (such as a bud(s) as well as a flower subject, or prey as well as an insect subject), I will typically arrange them in the frame to give an overall feeling of balance.
- I try not to cut off at the edge of the frame anything such as flowers or droplets, especially but not only if they are in focus. Sometimes though this is inevitable and I may use some processing to de-emphasise the cut-off item.
- In some cases there is a background that works really nicely, but only if the subject is placed where it goes against one of the above, which is what I'll do.
- I choose aspect ratios on an image by image basis. Sometimes I'll use the camera's native aspect ratio, but depending on the content on the image I'm happy to use a thin or square aspect ratio or anything intermediate, and I'll use landscape or portrait orientation depending on the content of the scene. (I shoot in landscape mode all the time for invertebrates. For flowers etc I shoot in portrait mode a lot.)
- I shoot series of images of invertebrates as they move around, which means that each capture is a split second decision. Especially if the subject is small, or if it is breezy, this means that captures are often ill-composed. Sometimes I will crop to get to a nice, "standard" type of composition, but as I've done more of these sequences recently I've come to the conclusion that by doing that a series can take on a rather bland appearance. Besides which, getting to a "standard" type of a composition may simply not be possible for some captures. I have learnt increasingly to appreciate some compositional irregularity and "rule-breaking" in series. It seems to reflect the haphazard movement that I often see with invertebrates in motion.
- Sometimes there is something in an image that looks intrusive when viewing that image by itself, but which looks quite natural when seen in the context of a series where the intrusive element comes to play a significant role later on in the series.
- Occasionally I will stretch or squash one or more sides of an image to get the overall balance of the composition more to my liking.
- Sometimes I will use local adjustments during post processing for compositional reasons, for example to de-emphasise or remove an element which unbalances the image.
How about you?
