Now I can describe quite quickly how I decide to photograph a person, the portrait, I try to capture the character of that person by teasing out a look or a glance that gives their portrait that character and some life. The lighting I may use which adds to mood or description is usually given to me (as I shoot mostly in available light) though location but I will of course manipulate it where I can, again to reflect the perceived character of the sitter.
When it comes to a Landscape however I think I need to put a lot more into how we 'choose' our composition, how we will frame, how we will use the various technical aspects of composition such as points, lines, balance and of course the light itself.
So for my example here, below we have a rather typical, somewhat drab evening sea scape taken in West Bay in Dorset, England. Lets take a look at what it offers and what attracted me to it.
Nikon D700, 24-70mm f2.8 @ 24mm, f22, 1/45sec, ISO 400
The first thing that drew me here was there potential to use reflection for balance, the water is almost still and with a long exposure I can 'iron' that down to reveal and use those reflections, an almost traditional aspect of painted art. I also recognise the lines coming from the run of rock both left and right of frame, these lines direct the viewer to the centre of the frame. Those lines had this exact effect on me as I framed tho shot myself, I was drawn to place the frame centre to where it is by those lines. Thirdly I felt we had some nice verticals too, the posts and warning pole directly oppose the horizontals and it is those I can already see have great potential for these reflections I wish to use. Now most of those things I noticed occurred in seconds, maybe less as I glanced around me looking for a shot, and that recognition came through my training and as I develop as a picture maker these decision become more natural and unthinking.
Now I have discussed, within myself what I want as content I need to consider my framing, now this for me is a slower process that takes a little experimentation as I now need to view this through the restrictions of the camera frame. Now of course I can see a lot more around me than the sample shot above gives the reader. That said I have decided to use that framed shot, or part of it, with some tweaking left or right, landscape or portrait etc. As it appears above, to me there is firstly a lack of balance, I have come to realise that balance is a very important aspect of composition, In many ways to me you can get away with skipping a lot with composition but if balance is missing is shows itself up. The next thing was the position of the horizon, now we are told it should 'usually' be ay a third point or beyond, but rarely or not normally centre frame. Now this is a rule I break often, I do so as I like to use balance between the upper and lower parts of the frame, and to do that well I believe a mid point horizon works.
The single element that is screaming 'wrong' at me here though is the crop, its too wide as is and therefore doesn't concentrate on the interesting elements that we have in front of me. I need to go in much tighter and pick out the same elements I have already discussed but collected into the final composition. Finally I mentioned before using a long exposure, this does a few things for me, firstly it simplifies the scene, making it minimalist which I favour. Then is smooths our water to enhance the reflections and finally it adds interest to the sky as it captures the movement of the clouds.
So that all said and done, what do I arrive at?
D700, 24-70mm f2.8@ 52mm, f16, 30sec, ISO 400
You can see we have balance on both sides, we have our horizontal, our verticals and reflections. I opened up the aperture to brighten the exposure and zoomed in to 52mm to crop in on my final composition.
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