Composition doesn't exist
Aug. 28th, 2012 04:10 pmOne of the many interesting ideas I picked up from the street photography workshop I went to yesterday was about composition. Or, the non-existence of. "There's no such thing as composition. Pick the three things you want in the picture, make sure they're in the frame, then press the button."
By which I understand not that it doesn't matter how things are arranged in the picture, but that, certainly with street photography, it is best to concentrate first on actual elements rather than the overall arrangement of the scene. The positioning of the elements comes naturally once you've decided what they are. Moreover, when you'll only have a fraction of a second for the shot, you'd best not be messing about with the rule of thirds etc if you can't do it instinctively.
It's an approach I will be trying, anyway. (The first roll I took on this workshop is in the lab at the moment, and is probably crap, but that's me, not the tutor.)