Ok, I'm confused as can be about digital sizing

Here's the PSD file with overlays that I used.  You just need to paste your image as a 300x450 pixel image underneath everything and show one overlay layer at a time.  Depending on the image you're using it may not work, but you can at least get the idea. 

Thanks Ryan, I am probably going to add something informational about crops on my website as well.  It will help.  I recently had a family portrait session where they wanted me to crop a horizontal picture into a square one.  I asked if they wanted to crop out the sister on the left or the brother on the right.  They laughed and picked a different crop.

2X2.5, 4X5 and 8X10 film

Travis

Jacque - I bet the guides are nice, I just learned about where to crop, I always leave space around my image because you can always crop in, not out.

And Bob, I love 8x10 compared to 4x6 (8x12), I think it makes for better composition.  I HATE when engaged couples ask for 4x6 cropping for their invites.  I ask upfront what they are using mainly because square is so popular right now.  That way I can shoot with their preference in mind.

OK-  Hee it is!

IS YOUR COMPISITION "FIT"?

Hi Gang! This article stems from a question posted by a popular menber regarding what he called his “bad habit” of shooting “too close” or too tight when covering wedding assignments. The simple answer may have been to just back up or zoom out and be done with it- simple enough? Well not really! His problem really lies in the realm of basic photographic composition and proportion which is a really interesting and vital part of all types of photography and thus- this article.

I don’t want to bore everyone with a list of rules that dictate MY way of “seeing” or a bunch of cardinal sins that would cost you points at a P.P. of A. print competition. What I have to say here is more to help you learn the skill of PRE-VISUALIZATION, that is, a methodology to make you a better story teller with each image you produce and to make your life a lot easier when producing finished work, wedding albums, display prints and everything else from annual reports to baby pictures.

I want to TRY to maintain a nuts and bolts tone in this article so I am going to refrain from my usual propensity to use fancy words (most of which I don’t even fully understand) or quotes from the Italian Masters which supposedly contain great pearls of philosophical wisdom and probably really mean “go home and mind your own business before I smack your ugly face” in some obscure Sicilian dialect. One of theses masters, however and I won’t drop his name because I can’t spell it, did say something to the effect that in a perfect composition there is a point where if you add or remove any of the elements in the image, it will be spoiled. This was his way of saying “if it ain’t broke- don’t fix it and once you see it shoot the damn picture already! I gotta say he has something there.

What is composition? It is simply where and how we place people, places and things in a given photographic format. A successful composition helps focus the viewer’s eye on the motif of any image so that we photographers can tell the story which we wish to communicate- it helps us make our statement. Perhaps this is an oversimplification but here’s an example. We photograph a bride in her dressing room moments before her ceremony. We want this image to show, perhaps a very soft and poignant moment- we want the image to say “…just before the big step”. In doing this shot we carefully take a position that shows nothing in the background- she is all alone- she is momentarily isolated. Our statement is simple “a lovely bride in her dressing room”. We shoot- we SCORE! But just a second! If we had shifted maybe an inch from that camera position and a hook on the wall was revealed the statement could radically change to “ a lovely bride in her dressing room with a hook growing our of her ear”. If an article of one of the bridesmaid’s undergarments were to show (hanging on the hook) - the entire imaged would become laughable. OK- so you Photoshop it out- but I hope you get my point. Since you are not shooting a still life table top but in fact a wedding, you can not alter the composition by moving about the “pieces” but you are altering the composition, at times, by changing viewpoints or your camera position. That is why this example is indeed a matter of composition. In this very same example, if you were to include the parents or other important bridal party members in the background, depending on the proximity and expressions of the subject, each image would make an entirely different emotional statement. Some of this, of course, has to do with expression, lighting and optical perspective but the idea of moving objects or people to different parts of the given format, is the compositional part and that is what I am addressing here.

There are three types of compositional considerations; one I call “mechanical”, the next one I call “composition within the pose or subject position” and the third I refer to as “total composition within the format”.

Let’s do the first one- MECHANICAL COMPOSITION. This is the most fun and works largely on common sense and logic. It is a great lesson in pre-visualization of an entire job or photographic project. In the wedding business, lack of this skill is an age old problem and can make the construction of a simple wedding album into a nightmare. This applies to the barebones slide in albums to the most cutting edge digital leather bound edition.

It all boils down to the old story of trying to pound a round peg into a square hole- it just won’t work! This is all about proportion and aspect ratio. Although we are long past the days when we are stuck with one size prints wedding albums, some wedding album presentations are still primarily one size such as 8X10, 10X10, 10x12 or 11x14. In my own album designs my favorite seller is the 11x14 flush album- some across the gutter panoramic and the odd montage page. I prefer albums that are all photography- big images! When doing such an assignment we have to respect the format of most of the job and make sure we are shooting in proportion to the finished- we must pre-visualize the final product so that every print can be made quickly and easily without endless corrections to extend backgrounds in Photoshop, create too many gaudy borders, which I find distracting and time consuming and in short, my least favorite concept; re-shooting every shot in the darkroom/computer.

This is not a complex area of compositional theory but when the proportion of the image size on the film or the digital sensor doesn’t jibe with that of the finished job the quality of the photographs from some rather obvious “mistakes” that oftentimes just look silly- things like a full length formal groups where the subjects appear to be cut off at the ankles- well it’s better than being cut off at their foreheads. Allowances also have to be made for album page lips and binding tapes which may cut into the image.

What surprises me is that this was a problem that plagued studios and labs back in the days of film only photography but has walked right into the digital era. Some photographers would fill their negatives to the very edges and wonder why a 10x10 wedding album could not be easily produced from 6x7cm or 6x4.5cm negatives, so called ideal format. Of course the ideal format was supposed to be 8x10. By the same token 8x10 prints were no easy makings from over stuffed 6X6 negatives. So the first good habit that must be developed in striving for good composition is to not shoot to fill up the viewfinder but to shoot in proportion to the job at hand. It comes with practice and will soon become automatic as soon as you put the camera to your eye. Another aid is to mask off part of the viewfinder to accommodate the real format you are shooting for.

This theory also applies when you are making stylized portraits such as a “Victorian” feminine portrait presented in an oval picture frame- you need to insure the image will fit nicely into the oval with out disturbing the composition or “chopping off” some elements of the image. In advertising work similar precautions must be taken to allow for predetermined copy or other graphics that will make up the finished advertising piece.

All of this may seem almost too rudimentary but oddly enough theses simple methods are often ignored. Some of this format thing comes from the old film sizes. In the olden days, many professionals used 8x18 and 4x5 film so that 8x10 (somehow chosen as the “ideal format” so that 4x5s, 8x10 and 16x20 were easily printed from theses negatives. The old full 2 ½ x 3 ¼ mini-press camera negatives were more suited for 5x7s. When the 6x6 TLRs and SLRs dominated the scene, all hell broke lose in color labs where photographers were submitting out of proportion negatives for 8x10 wedding candids. It was easy enough to leave just a bit more space on those square negatives to accommodate the 8x10 wedding albums but few seemed to do that. It got to the point, when I was working in New York years ago, where studios would not hire a wedding photographer unless he had a 6x7 MF camera where he could just fill the negative up and be done with it. Again I still find it funny that this problem still exists in the digital age where the 35mm DSLR image is far from 8x10 proportion and people are still overstuffing their images.

OK folks! Now that we are no longer all trying to hammer round pegs into square holes or rectangular pegs into less rectangular holes let’s get on with the next issue:

COMPOSITION WITHIN THE POSE. When we are creating formal poses there are many there are many issues we need to deal with. We want the pose to be natural and not look artificial, stilted, or strained and we want to create “lines” that help us make our statement about the subject- things like posture and stance help indicate such attributes as dignity, gracefulness, gender and attitude. We also need to create “lines” within the pose that direct the viewers eye to the motif of the portrait without distraction. Anatomy wise, we want to care to arrange limbs, hands and body positions that do not distort the face or body. When arms and legs leave the composition and then reenter at another place in the frame this causes disbelief in the viewer’s mind because it seems unnatural. If we are going, for instance, to include the subject’s hand in a head and shoulders portrait, must pose the arms, at the elbows,
giving base and balance to the composition. This, of course is just an example of many such techniques that make for better composition within the pose.

TOTAL COMPOSITION- In my more flowery and poetic days I once wrote an ad for my studio- something to the effect that “Like a fine painter the film is my canvas, my lights are my colors and brushes and I see the image in my mind’s eye long before it appears on a photograph”. Why not- it is the truth- that is my approach! Just like a fine artist we command control over where we place our subjects in the frame. Shooting thigh or shooting with lots of space around the subjects is not necessarily a good or bad habit- the good habit is knowing which to do to best tell the story, impart viewer impact in you image and create good aesthetics. A lot has to do with print size, image size, application and usage of the final image- a few examples: A thigh view of a baby’s face with a big silly smile is cute is an 8x10 print whereas a 30x40 of the very same image would look grotesque in a larger than life presentation- like those gigantic head shots of dictators in those strife torn countries we see (sadly enough) in news footage. If you want to make a 30x40 of a baby it’s gotta be a full length or better yet an image where the baby is place at the bottom of the composition leaving a lot of negative space above the subject- the statement- a small child in a large world. Ideally- a baby in a lovely garden or natural setting with plenty of space around him. I call this the luxury of space. When making a classic profile portrait we need to leave more space in the front of the subject that at the back of the subject so that the subject seems to be looking ahead rather than butting his or her nose against the picture frame- that looks claustrophobic! Tight shots, on the other hand, are more intimate and work well in theatrical, glamour and very dramatic presentations. Tight images are not recommended if you want to inject background interest in your story or statement. Nowadays, many executive portraits business people are shown with an entire building or interior of a factory in the background, all in sharp focus. Theses portraits are carefully made with wide angle lenses- not usually though of as the best tools for portraiture. Portraits of this nature have to be carefully designed from a compositional and lighting standpoint and much caution is applied to keep the camera level so as to avoid optical distortion, especially in the subject.

The good thing about understand the elements of composition is that the same exact theory applies to photographing a speeding Formula1 car as an elegant bride in profile- you don’t want that multimillion dollar ride crashing in to a picture frame!

Ed