On Techniques & Compositions
Composition is an integral part of a picture, it’s infact the very language of visual communication. But like any language if the parts are too prominent the harmony feels lost, it feels bombastic. I prefer it to be more organic, the structure giving a support to the message and not being the message itself. An intended leading line feels much more pleasing as well as intelligent than a well defined concrete line seeking all attention and in most cases away from the main subject (provided there’s one).
The feel is similar or worse when techniques are visible; Instagram is full of such gimmick shots, like panning, bokeh of clutter, sun stars, flares, weird color tones, zoom bursts, and much more. The core street photography community in India avoids it luckily.
Here’s what the masters say on this topic -
“Technique should be invisible. This means that the viewer should be unaware of the techniques you employed because everything appears natural and correct. The viewer should have the feeling that “you were in the right place at the right time”—in other words, you were simply “lucky” to have been there—leaving that viewer completely unaware of all the maneuvering you may have gone through to achieve the image being viewed. When used intelligently and effectively, none of those maneuvers should be evident. When technique becomes apparent, the image, itself, is lost.”
- Bruce Barnbaum
“Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move. In applying the Golden Rule, the only pair of compasses at the photographers disposal is his own pair of eyes. Any geometrical analysis, any reducing of the picture to a schema, can be done only (because of its very nature) after the photograph has been taken, developed and printed — and then it can be used for postmortem examination of the picture.”
- Henri-Cartier Bresson
Footnote - The image used in this post was shot by me in 2010 at Khadi War Memorial, Pune. Photography is now banned there today.