The Art of Composition

DEPTH

The scene's depth is emphasised by including interesting subjects at varying distances from the camera.

• Spatial Depth in Photography – What Is It and why bother about it?

What is Spatial Depth in a Photograph?

• Emphasis of the presentations is on increasing spatial depth.

• It is about creating photographs that give an increased feeling of a perceived or illusionary third-dimensionality. [Not 3D]

• It is also about enticing people to look at and experience your photographs as “readers” (not just “viewers”).

• Just viewing something is a passive activity. • Photographs having “spatial depth” engage people,

gently draw them in, allowing them to be active readers of your pictorial story.

Spatial Depth cont’d

• Aim to generate within the reader a deeper, fuller, longer experience - you have to create that invitation before you press the shutter button.

• Such photos express not only a two dimensional space but a cubic space i.e. there is more room to linger longer, to move about the area but more importantly, explore the cubic space of the image.

Spatial Depth cont’d

• The more you create an illusion of reality, the deeper the potential experience, the longer the memory of the image, the greater the impact on readers’ minds and hearts – which is what all photographers wish to occur!

Spatial Depth cont’d

“Spatial depth” is really about two complimentary aspects:

Refining your understanding of what your readers are likely to experience when they look at your photograph

Enhancing your own ability to express yourself more fully to deliver that experience.

• The feeling the reader gets from each of the following two images is different because the perceived depth is different.

Could be the “Pontoon” Location at Karri Valley

Could be the “Corner” Location at Karri Valley

Ways to Create Greater Spatial Depth

• 1. Use Perspective• 2. Conceive your photo to be a “cube” - not just a

flat two dimensional area.• 3. Use different focal length lenses.• 4. Intentionally throw some part of the photo out

of focus.• 5. Use opposite colours.• 6. Use side light – great for B & W photos.

• 7. Use emotions.

Using Perspective• The geometry in your viewfinder will always

derive from the position of your camera.• Straight lines will either remain parallel or

converge into a point on a horizon.• Elements in your viewfinder will reduce in size

as they recede and follow that vanishing point.• Circles become ellipses & squares become

trapezoids.

• Just changing the location of your camera you can add/remove a sense of spatial depth - gives great creative potential.

• The stronger the clues you provide with perspective, the more unavoidable it is for the reader not to read spatial depth into your photo.

• Painters for centuries have used aerial perspective to build in an illusion of spatial depth.

Where is your eye magnetically drawn to? You don’t have much choice to refuse the invitation, do you!

The photographer has created a journey for the reader’s eye

Agony in the Garden

Giovanni Bellini c 1465

Early Ming Dynasty Painting

Dai Jing [1370 -1650]

Think of your photo as a Cube

• Most people describe a photograph spatially as a RECTANGLE or SQUARE.

• Yet, the same photograph can be conceived as a CUBE – that’s how we naturally perceive things.

Think of your photo as a Cube cont’d

• We all have been conditioned to think we have only width and height to play with in rectangular, square or panorama photographs.

• The ‘rule of thirds’ has been a good friend of photographers for >100 years.

• What happens if you contemporaneously think of using this concept but apply it to the depth of an image?

Think of your photo as a Cube cont’d

• Calling this ‘foreground’, ‘midground’ and ‘background’ gives you a frame divided depth-wise into three.

• This helps you think about placing key elements in the photo at somewhere approximating these thirds.

• This gives the reader key visual clues about the spatial depth you have consciously built into the photograph … same as the early painters did.

Think o your photo as a Cube cont’d

• Instead of ‘looking at’ (viewing) your photograph (a two dimensional experience) the reader is now ‘looking into’ the image (a three dimensional experience and journey).

• A few examples.

A

B

C

Use different focal length lenses• Your choice of lens greatly influences spatial depth in a

photo.

• Short lenses (say <40 - 50mm) exaggerate the sense of spatial depth; longer lenses (say >40 - 50mm) compress foreground & background and reduce the sense of spatial depth.

• When creating extended spatial depth in a photograph you might find it helpful to think of the ‘angle of view’ of a lens.

Use different focal length lenses cont’d

• Look at the difference in the ‘angle of view’ built into a 24mm and a 85mm lens.

Use different focal length lenses cont’d

Only reason for picking 24mm & 85mm is because they nicely invert their values and make it easy to remember.

Use different focal length lenses cont’d

• Try shooting the same scene, first with a 30mm lens and then with a 16mm lens.

Use different focal length lenses cont’d

• Wider angle lenses by virtue of their ‘angle of view’, are more inclusive lenses, and that is very much the point of spatial depth to begin with, namely you are trying to create a feeling of inclusion for the reader.

• Just like a good book makes you feel as if you are there with the author.

• Why do you think a fisheye lens is often called a POV (point of view) lens?

• A POV lens gives the reader a greater feeling of being there, within the scene, instead of just looking at it.

The same photographer has done it again!

The reader almost feels like kneeling down in the middle of the aisle!

Deliberate use of Out-of-Focus• To separate the foreground and background in

a photo to increase spatial depth, deliberately set out to use a change of focus.

• When the quality of focus changes from foreground to background you get an increase in spatial depth - that’s how focus work!

Deliberate use of Out-of-Focus cont’d

• If you deliberately shoot part of a photo that is close to you out of focus and keep the background in sharp focus, you are suggesting to the reader that the spatial depth of the photograph is greater.

Deliberate use of Out-of-Focus cont’d

• The same works in reverse if we throw the background out of focus and keep something in the foreground in focus.

Most readers commence at the nose and are drawn towards the eyes but look at the amount of the animal

that is out of focus.

Use Opposite Colours

• Our eye is naturally drawn to warmer colours before cooler colours – that’s the way we are made!

• When a warmer coloured element is included in a predominantly cool photograph, that element appears to move forward within the image, giving the image an illusion of greater spatial depth.

• But, will a cooler element in a largely warmer scene have the same effect? Let’s see!

The Tribute Money

Masaccio 1427

Yellow

Blue

Red

Cyan

Using Opposite Colours cont’d

• Would this kind of thinking help create a similar deepening effect in a black and white photograph?

• Let’s see.

The Value of Tonal Contrast• In monochrome it is more helpful to think in

terms of tonal contrast than in terms of colour.

• It is the contrast – whether colour or tone, that draws the readers eye and the greater the contrast between foreground and background elements, the greater the appearance or illusion of spatial depth in the photograph.

Using Side Light• The early Renaissance painters taught us about using

light and shadows to give visual clues about dimensionality and spatial depth.

• The term ‘chiaroscuro’, from two Italian words meaning (chiaro) light and (scuro) dark comes from this early period of art when painters had to duplicate both light and dark (not merely expose correctly for it) to add drama and dimensionality to their work.

• It became a major compositional tool for them.

Spatial Depth through Light

Chiaroscuro is a way of using light to create an illusion of a three-dimensional form within two dimensions. Light and shadow always conform

to this given “formula”.

Light Dark

Chiaroscuro at work to create spatial depth

Spear - a foreground anchor

Textures give spatial depth

Varying tonal contrasts and the oblique angle of his head add to the

spatial depth in the image

Using Emotions• This is both the easiest and hardest way to create

spatial depth in photographs.

• The earlier emphasis on ‘spatial depth’ should not take the reader on a visual journey through the image, only to find, and feel nothing there!

• “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel”

Carl W. Buechner

Using Emotions cont’d

• What it takes to touch those deeper emotions in us is not easy to fathom and it is not a technique but an instinct and the product of an inspired eye; it’s also more difficult to explain.

• It is easier to master a technique (and move on, to the next ‘proven’ technique). The expertise needed to create photographs that move us deeply is not as easy to master.

Using Emotions cont’d

• The planet doesn’t need more photographs.

• It is crying out for photographs that reveal something, that invoke feelings and that touch readers at some level.

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Author Unknown

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