Composition
Composition is about the arrangement of elements in an image. The aim is to capture and draw the attention of the viewer both to the image as a whole and to specific elements you wish them to explore/focus on. The elements must be arranged with clear purpose and nothing should be accidental or casual.
Focal points and areas
The first thing to do is to establish the focus points of the space – these are the areas where centres of attention should be.
Each space will have defined focal points, which you can enhance, or if your image is clear enough you can draw attention to a focal point of your choosing. To make it interesting there are different approaches to identifying focal points. This allows for some variety.
The following ways of defining focal points are based on simple, yet common proportions.
There are other such ideas – for example in architecture further proportioning ratios are used to establish the visual and physical relationships between elements.
So there are many ways to look at finding focal points and defining areas of a visual space.
Force fields
Wherever you place an element in a space it creates a sense of tension – energy or dynamic. These link with focus points, though are defined by the element in the space, rather than by the space alone. Adding more elements creates more lines of energy and tension.
By placing elements at focal points or in focal areas in principle you strengthen the energy of the element.
Elements
If you have more than a few elements they can compete for focus making the image too busy or unfocused overall. This is because of the force fields that they create. The usual rule of thumb is to have about 3-5 key elements with a clear priority one to five. When you look at most good images [they capture and hold attention] they have 1-3 key elements.
Highlighting or drawing the eye to elements
There are many tools and devises for doing this, here are a few, simply illustrated. The essence is here it’s how you combine the tools to make most impact – scale, positioning, colour, detail can all emphasise an element over and above another if there is some range.
The bolder a piece the more extreme will be the contrasts, and probably the less detail. Though interestingly if everything is bold you might lose the key element amongst the rest. So appreciating the variation on different levels is critical.
The best thing to do is to try things out, look at images and work out why they work or don’t. Too little focus, too many elements, or are the elements actually a cluster of smaller elements, so how do the clusters work?
Have fun.
