CENTERED
COMPOSITION - Centred or to one side?
Sometimes things happen so quickly that you don’t have the time to make a choice and you simply grab the shot. But if you do have time then you can think about ‘composing’ the scene in front of you. If it’s a centre subject then it should dominate, meaning there should be no more information left or right of the subject. It should be able to stand alone.
The shot at (a) of the medieval French village of Najac, there is no need to place the castle anywhere other than the centre. All the information is there. The hilly cobbled street, the castle, the bonus of the mood bought on by sunset, all lead to the castle which is the focus. This tells us who wielded the power in 13th century. When you have definite lines guiding you to a point, then incorporate them in your composition.
Basically, if you were led to the centre then so will your viewer.
A storm is brewing in the desert of Australia’s Northern Territory (b). All the information is centred and we can tell quite clearly what it is, there is no need for interpertation. The same goes for the old barn (c) in Oxfordshire, UK. Even the lines of the other building leads us to it. The central feature of course is the allusion to a human face, so taking centre stage is okay here.
Now let’s try setting our subject off to one side and see what it does. This is how you can alter your composition to see if your audience can follow your thinking or implication.
Let’s take this camping scene (a). Sure we could have got closer to the van, but it does depend on the story. In this case it’s a story about the river Tarn in south west France. Placing the humans off to one side, gives power to the river, whilst still showing that the river is very accessible. So even though the van is small by comparison to the river, they are both equal visually. If the van was closer, therefore larger, it would shift the balance and therefore it would be a different story. You have to be clear in your mind as to which story it is going to be.
Placing the farm off to the right in the Icelandic storm-scape (b) shows scale. Either the impending storm, or the volcano could endanger the farm. It implies that our human endeavours are miniscule compared to the power of nature and this was my reason for the composition. You can almost feel what it would be like to be there. So shots like these can act as a communication device.
Like the camper van shot, if the balance of visual elements change, so too does the story.