Mastering Your Compositions

By David Beckstead

A real enemy to creativity is the all–encompassing dread of missing a safe shot. I miss safe shots at every wedding, and I have learned not to worry about it. I know that my overall wedding shoot will thrill the bride and groom, and a few missed safe shots will not be in their minds while looking at the proofs. What I have gained by experimentation overpowers a few missed shots.

Why not learn to believe your LCD and recognize when the safe shot is in the bag so you can give yourself time to play? You may only have one minute or less to try a different angle, look for an unusual composition, or just have fun shooting images for your artistic growth and satisfaction. You may have more time to really study a situation and attack a scene with passion; you might improve your art by increasing the complexity or narrowing down your compositional elements for more elegant simplicity.

This playtime is your playground for enhancing your perception. It's good to zero in on your subject and capture pure emotion. It's equally good to pull back and heighten your awareness by seeing and feeling what is going on around you. Not just 180 degrees in front and to the side, but 360 degrees and at different locations within an area, such as the preparation room for the wedding party.

Let's take a nice hotel bridal suite layout. The bride is in the open-door bathroom putting on makeup, and the bridesmaids are getting ready in front of the mirrors located around the main room. What type of lighting do you have? How does the natural light play on the room and subjects? How does the tungsten light mix with the natural light? How do the lines of the room interact with the subjects? What is in the way of compositions, and what will enhance them? These are perceptions you can nail down in one minute-really!

The tendency is to go directly to the subjects and start shooting actions without taking a moment to see it all. I ask my brides to put on makeup and get their hair done by naturally lit windows. (This request is made months in advance). They say yes, but sometimes brides forget. I have been known to ask the bride to step out of the tungsten-lit bathroom and into the natural light. But before I ask this, I walk into the bathroom and see if there are other compositional elements that help equal my desire for nice natural-light windows. I may perceive that the mirrors, reflective surfaces, angles and lines in the bathroom give me more room for creative play.

Now with any room there may be a limited amount of natural light. How do you see what is there quickly and utilize it to the best of your knowledge? I have a method that works: Walk into the room, then squint your eyes so all the complexity of the room fades away to nothing but darks and lights. Open your eyes widely and go to the light. Stand next to the light or in it, and then look for your intended subjects. See if this natural light can be used as a line, a pointer or a guide to your creative subjects. Then back off and perceive how the light can be used in an overall composition. Now that you have the natural light in a room dialed in, get your first safe shot (often using the natural light) and utilize your time between safe shots to be artistic.

Let's go outside: There is such a mass of natural elements and architecture that it can be overwhelming. Learning to be perceptive enough to use the compositional elements to create powerful, storytelling images can be daunting. How do you make compositional sense of it all? How do you avoid visual chaos?

Isolate, isolate, isolate! Isolate the compositional elements that convey a strong sense of the wedding story, its emotional elements and the wedding location. Include only the subjects that blend well with the natural environment or help tell the story. Learning to understand how you isolate is a perceptive ability necessary when shooting outdoors.

Outdoors, there may be too much natural light. Go back to my trick of squinting your eyes, but this time look for the darker areas. Now change your angle of view or move the subject into the darker areas. Then use light angles to highlight your subject. Very cool!

The quality and direction of light has been one of the most important aspects of perception since cameras were invented. Learn your light angles: sidelight and backlight. Be careful-don't get too caught up with the "quality of light." You are given only what the weather and bride's timeline allows. Part of being perceptive is how you change and flow with what really happens at your wedding, hour after hour. Finding the perfect quality of light will often elude you. Best to make use of the harsh light, the bad light, the poor-quality light, and then pull out all the stops of perception by working these types of light to your advantage. It's all in your head. Make something cool happen if it is not happening. Being perceptive about what your camera can do beyond Priority mode will give you tools of exposure to counteract the bad light. My advice-practice daily until you are comfortable with Aperture-Priority mode and Manual mode. Be the alpha dog of your camera; don't let it make all the decisions!

Spin the dial and experiment

Here is something to think about: shooting horizontal images outside is harder than shooting vertically. Why? Dead space. Understanding dead space is the ultimate in being perceptive. Lines outside tend to run vertically more often than horizontally. Trees and architecture often have many vertical lines; these lines can help guide you to your subjects.

Dead space is easier to find when you are shooting vertically-point your camera up to the sky or down to the ground. I define dead space as a place in the composition with few or no graphic elements-generally a block of color such as sky, a wall, flat ground or consistent patterns. Good use of dead space can enhance the subjects or direct the eye. Poor use of dead space leads the eye away from your subjects or detracts from the overall composition. Shooting good dead space in a horizontal format outside is not easy since there are so many elements that can intrude visually. Dead space it just one more perceptive ability you should have in your arsenal of artistic ideas to try out at every wedding.

Here is something else about shooting horizontally: including the intended subject is easy and normal (though you run the risk of bad dead space). Including another subject or subjects in the frame to help tell the whole story is difficult. Using one subject to lead into another is a perceptive ability you will need. Avoid using too many subjects, as it can only complicate the composition. To tell the more elegant story, isolate only the subject(s) needed with a less complicated background, eliminating any unnecessary dead space. Why? We are going explore that now.

Did I say dead space was hard to learn? Well, there is a harder one: depth. Seeing what is in front of and behind the subject is very important. Knowing how the background and foreground will affect the look of the subject in a composition is very important. The shades of dark and light, lines, and the complexity of the background and foreground elements can make or break an image. Color can add depth. It also can detract from the subject. Black-and-white images can flatten depth, but can also enhance the subject, making it easier for you to focus on the emotional elements of the subject's story. I believe each image should be viewed for these concepts of depth in post-processing before committing to black-and-white.

To make things more complicated: Color can enhance the subject, and converting to black-and-white may totally lose your subject in a sea of pattern and light. Perception during post-processing is also very important and can be learned with practice. I suggest posting images on the Digital Wedding Forum and asking detailed questions about depth and your use of color or black-and-white on the same image.

Knowing what to include and not include in your composition-behind, to the side of and in the front of your subject-is all about understanding depth.

Obviously lines are very important to me. How you perceive lines and how they interact with your subjects can bring an ordinary composition into the realm of art. Lines are amazing pointers. They add depth to an image. They will help your eye follow through to your subject and add interest when looking at a print. Of course, you can fill the frame with just your subject, but wouldn't it be so very boring if all your shots did this? The wedding day is your canvas to paint-use all those brushes, paints and tools you spent good money on to create your own stylized form of art.

Here is a fun way of finding lines: First, fill the frame with your subject. Now step back or zoom out and search for lines through the viewfinder that lead into the subject. Look all around, including to the ground. This helps narrow the field of view, and helps isolate a line or two that can help your composition.

Let's break a common rule-do not put your subject in the dead center of the composition. Well, let's break the heck out of that rule! If you are lucky enough to find a ton of converging lines, change your angle or put the subject in the center of all those converging lines. Then shift your viewfinder to bring the subject into the center. Now all the lines point to the center of the composition and to your subject for a dramatic image. I find it fun to look for this, but hard to make it all happen successfully-which is exactly why I try. If the lines will not come to you, go to them-use them to search out your subject with your viewfinder.

It is often good to see your wedding world with 16mm and 200mm eyes. I find it better to start each wedding location within the wedding day seeing in 16mm (the whole story and field of view). Then narrow your imagery down to 200mm to isolate subjects and pull in emotion. The focal lengths in between are fine, but I find going a little more extreme can create very dynamic imagery.

Another way to heighten awareness happens before the wedding day, as you should surf the web looking for photographer websites and wedding images that impress you. I find I learn new tricks of understanding perception all the time. I don't think I will top out on my learning of these concepts any time soon. Others always help me to see and go to new places with my imagery. Take a look at www.admiredbybeckstead.com; I have taken this idea to the extreme.

Here are other ideas and compositional elements to investigate with regard to increasing your perception-shape, form, organization, order, design, texture, color, pattern, mood, emotion, interpretation, abstraction, contrast, latitude, dynamic complexity, and arrangement of picture elements. There are so many more.

Learning perceptive abilities comes from within. Simply copying other photographers' abilities is a sure sign of stagnation. You should be excited to develop new levels of awareness on your own. Your imagery will improve dramatically by increasing your perceptive abilities. Just being able to see the light will crank your images to a new level of artistic creativity.

My final advice:

• Never believe you have made it to the highest level of awareness! (It doesn't exist!)
• Use your sensory input to increase the creativity of your art.
• Keep shooting! Never let your minute between safe shots go to waste!
• Take risks with your exposure. Think of risk as a good word!
• Experiment!
• See the light. Capture the light. Bend the light. Be the light.
• It's all fun! It's all good!

David Beckstead will be presenting a MasterClass at WPPI 2007 entitled "Compositional Commando." The program is scheduled for Wednesday, March 28, 8:30–10:30 am in BALLY's Palace Room 4. For more info, visit www.wppionline.com/tradeshow.

David Beckstead lives out in the middle of nowhere, Washington. David mixes his passion for art and travel to run a destination wedding photography business. He attributes his success to the Internet, pro forums, digital cameras, seminars and WPPI. Kassandra, his wife and business partner, shares his passions. Together they have successfully mixed their lifestyle with their business.