Wanted, Used Cars, Orlando, FL 2011
In class the other day, we started talking about approaches to making photos. One of the students saw something in the back of her photo that was of great interest to her now, but she completely did not see when making the photograph. I told her that often when someone makes a photograph they only concentrate on the main subject. In my own photography, I try to give a good deal of effort looking around the subject to make sure that there is noting in my images that I do not want there. I tend to give more attention to what is behind the subject than the subject itself. After all, the subject must be good, or it would not be the subject. Along the same line of thinking is what Sam Able said in a workshop of his that I attended, when he talked about how he tried to compose from the back forwards.
As the discussion moved on, the subject changed a bit from what is seen in composing a single image to how making one photograph can ask questions that may determine how the next photograph is composed. I have always said, that as much as possible, if a scene or subject is worth one photograph then it is worth making a few more. For a number of years I would just think about how many different ways that I could make an image, like change from horizontal to vertical, get higher or get lower, or change the focal length, et cetera, et cetera. However, in time I began to think that I would make one image and while looking at it through the viewfinder, the previous composition might suggest another composition or even ask me a question about how the subject might be viewed differently. Taking that extra look in the viewfinder might suggest another point of view, or lens to be used, or whatever. When I did this, photos seem to build upon one another, each image asking me what would happen if I did this or did that. Changes in composition were made with more purpose and allowed me to become more absorbed in what I was trying to say with my image.
Recently I was shooting a sign for a local car repair place. When I first got out of my van I saw the image as a straight forward image that would have been solely of the tire and what was written on it. But that image told me that it might be more if there was more foreground – background relationship, so I pulled out the wide angle lens and got a composition that also included another sign in the foreground and a billboard in the background. But then moving to the other side, I was able to include a house like building in the background that was visually important, but subtler than the image that had the billboard. Either image was visually and contextually stronger than the first view. It paid to have taken the time to consider as many of the possibilities and opportunities that any composition gives me.
