Lessons from Rozov: the main thing in the frame. Part 1

There’s no substitute for talent in composition. It can be compared to the skill of an orator forcing himself to listen.

A well-constructed photograph does not guarantee the love of the audience, but it gives hope for attention. You can’t succeed without mastering the craft knowledge and skills, and they don’t fall from the sky with emotional sensitivity. Particularly important is the ability to compose objects on the plane of a future photograph and to isolate the main ones, so that no one could mistake the secondary for the essence of the statement. This is the subject of one of the books in a new series of textbooks by Georgy Rozov – “Composition and Emphasis”, which is going to print at the publishing house “Astril” New York . Below we publish a short excerpt from it.

Blur and harmony in the frame

Network gems: I won’t mince words. Let me put it simply: you can’t shoot. Aside from the composition, what’s missing from the pictures is – everything.Composition from Latin compositio, composition, composition means construction, relation, mutual arrangement of parts. When applied to photography, this means the positioning of all the elements of a picture so that they make up an organic whole.

I liked something and wanted to take a picture of it. I defocus my eyes to the point of loss of realism, almost to the point of abstraction, so that the picture becomes a plane filled with colored blurs. Approximately as in photo 1a. This makes it easier to analyze the harmony of the spots of the future photo.

I see several triangles with their points converging at one point. Blue triangles divide the frame diagonally. Orange and red triangles also divide their, the lower half of the frame, in half. They side by side with triangles colored by a mixture of the light from mercury lamps green , daylight blue , and the light of orange spotlights reflected from the stands of the rolling mill. The floor is not painted: it’s metallic and ready to reflect any light. That’s why it’s hard to define its color in one word. I call it gray-blue-green.

Conclusion: I like the combination of blue and contrasting orange sectors. The cold part of the frame takes up about half of it. The stands of the rolling mill, where the red-hot metal is flattened to the thickness of the refrigerator wall, are warm and orange, as if by order. The floor triangle, even though it falls out of the blue-orange contrasting structure of the frame, but it doesn’t argue with it, because it’s painted in cool, dim tones. The graphical figure seemed to me quite equilibrium. You can keep shooting.

1a. This is roughly how I see the future image see image below . photo 1b with my eyes unfocused, during Spot Analysis.

1b. Rolling Mill 2000. Novolipetsk Steel.

Nikon D3S camera. AF-S Nikkor 14-24/2 zoom.8 G ED N. Sensitivity 1000 ISO. Shutter speed 1/80 sec. Aperture 2.8. The exposure correction is -1.67 EV. Focal length 14mm.

Frame boundaries

A typewritten page of A4 format, the silhouette of St.Peter’s Cathedral in Rome and the American Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, the size of a TV set and a camera viewfinder frame have one thing in common: the ratio of all these objects’ sides is about three to four, which corresponds to the Golden Section harmonic proportions .

This doesn’t mean that all cameras have these proportions. There are, for example, cameras with a square frame and panoramic cameras with an aspect ratio of 2 to 1. And that doesn’t stop a photographer from composing beautiful images within that viewfinder. I will give you some examples of these “wrong” photos later. But still more often we have to frame the shot by looking through the peephole with the classical 3:4 aspect ratio.

The first thing a photographer has to do is to get yourself to look like a horse with blinders over his eyes. For those who haven’t yet encountered this useful invention, let me remind you that blinds are leather shutters attached to the side, near the horse’s eyes, so the animal won’t stare around, but will look straight ahead, won’t see anything extra and won’t be frightened of cars, for instance. A photographer looking through the peephole of the viewfinder cannot see anything outside the frame.

You have to keep nodding your head and select an island in the world around you. I have to admit, it can be hard to choose. For example, the same rolling mill with the same components the mill control box on the left and the stands on the right might not look quite the same as in photo 1b. I just turned my head slightly to the left and got a frame divided almost in half, but vertically. On the left a blue quiet coolness, and on the right a rumbling red heat see. photo 2 .

2. Rolling Mill 2000.

Shifting the camera to the left, compared to the first version of this scene, changed not only the ratio of spots in the frame. There was more blue, which made the frame static and inaudible. The viewer is in the position of a Buridan donkey put at an equal distance from two equal haystacks. The poor animal starved to death, not deciding which hay to eat first, and which later.

The first shot invited the viewer to admire the power and beauty of the machinery. The blue half wasn’t left out either, because blue combined with red becomes very appealing to the eye. The blue spot doesn’t escape the viewer’s attention anyway. And the people controlling the orange cells will get their share of attention and the picture won’t be unbalanced.

So my attempt to equalize blue and red in the frame is wrong. The blue color is heavier in this shot, and there shouldn’t be too much of it. My mistake of a mere two centimeters in my choice of shot point was able to take the balance out of the composition.

The Nikon D3S.

AF-S Nikkor 14-24/2 zoom.8 G ED N.

Sensitivity 1000 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/40 sec.

Aperture 2.8.

Auto Correction -0.67 EV.

Focal length: 14 mm.

A Norwegian sunset in three versions

In Norway it happened to observe an unusually beautiful, absolutely Rerikh sunset. I had no time for reflections, as the sun had set behind the horizon about half an hour before. Because of that the colors had already faded and were about to go out completely.

We were in a hurry not to miss the ferry, as we would have to wait for the next boat until morning. I had seconds for the first two frames. I took photos without leaving the car photos 3 and 4 . We drove off, but after about fifty meters I screamed with delight. The car was stopped one more time photo 5 . Now I can spend my free time thinking about the importance of the shooting point and how the initial choice of subject influences the result of the photograph in general.

In the 1970s, the biggest-printed magazine in the USSR gave a photographer a maximum of two or three medium-format films, that is, 24 frames, to shoot the cover. I had to economize. Before deciding to press the shutter, one should have thought it over and weighed everything up, because film is expensive and in short supply. Now that digital lets you relax and think only about getting the result, the psychology of photographer’s behavior has changed. Many times I caught myself the thought that I literally shot the object from different angles, without holding back at all. it is important not to miss the moment, to make the best shot so as not to regret the lost luck.

Life’s moments are unrepeatable. It is possible to return to the place you were shooting, but no way to make the same shot as the one that was not taken yesterday. The light wouldn’t be right, the weather wouldn’t be right, the muse might go on strike. In a word, on the one hand it’s good to shoot with a pinch, and on the other hand it’s good to shoot with a pinch. But, on the other hand, how painful and disgusting it is to look through a set of almost identical files, looking for the best one among them, the one for the sake of which tens of takes have been made.

The most annoying thing is when, staring into the monitor with eyes dazed with tension, you realize that in the mountain of garbage you have viewed there is nothing worthy of attention and further processing. That in the rush of creative fever I have made unfortunate mistakes: technical or compositional, not caught that one moment that should have been stopped..

Knowing how to shoot quickly and accurately comes with experience, when the knowledge and skills are adjusted to automatism. At the beginning, when you are getting the hang of composition, you have to hurry slowly. You can’t, for example, by all means try to squeeze into the classic frame any subjects that don’t fit into it. Photos can be square, stretched horizontally or vertically. Any aspect ratio can turn out to be an organically composed image. Pictures of all formats obey the rule of thirds, derived from the golden ratio photos 6, 7, 8 .

3. Norwegian Sunset 1.

The car stopped in the gap between two houses that look like our “very slotted” Komsomol dormitories. They have always been built as temporary structures, for twenty years, but even half a century later they keep the prisoners captive.

The architecture of Norwegian farmhouses is very similar. Only the houses here are well-groomed, plain, unpretentious but cheerful. The left house winked with the windows that reflected the light from the sky, and the Finnish pinotex antiseptic painted joinery also had a subtle effect, bringing the wall surface to life. The sun from below was licking the crimson rays off the cloud above me. It gave me a picture of a stark, gloomy sunset. From my point of view, this is what a Viking land of warriors should look like.

Nikon D3S camera.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2 zoom.8 ED N.

Sensitivity 250 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/160 sec.

Aperture 6.3.

Exposure compensation -0.67 EV.

The focal length is 24mm.

4. Norwegian sunset 2.

I was about to get in the backseat of the jeep to drive on, but my eyes darted to the rear door mirror and I got a chance to shoot two sunsets at the same time. How useful, however, to turn your head before you cuff the camera!

Nikon D3S camera.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2.8 ED N.

Sensitivity 250 ISO.

Exposure 1/200 s.

Aperture 6.3.

Exposure compensation -0.67 EV.

24 mm focal length.

5. Norwegian Sunset 3.

The vantage point has changed: the camera moved a few meters down, almost to sea level. Gone is the foreground. Lens zoom was changed: the first pictures were taken at wide angle, this one at telephoto. That is, I changed the angle of view of the same lens, and it covers less space than in the first two versions of this scene. I had to raise the sensitivity to shoot at slow shutter speeds and achieve satisfactory sharpness throughout the frame. As a parent, I find all babies beautiful and unique. I couldn’t throw any of the three in the garbage can.

Nikon D3S.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2 zoom.8 ED N.

Sensitivity 1600 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/640 sec.

Aperture 6,3.

Exposure compensation -0.67 EV.

Focal length 70 mm.

Rule of Thirds

If the frame is mentally divided into three parts horizontally and vertically, the intersection points of the rectangles show the special areas. If you place an object near them that you want to draw the viewer’s attention to, the goal will almost certainly be achieved photos 9 and 10 .

I should mention that the rule of thirds was invented a long time ago. This is what the textbooks I used to learn about photography forty years ago wrote about. VGIK professor Lydia Dyko told us about it at her composition lectures. I can’t shut up about the existence of this rule, if so many people believe it’s correct and obey it in practice.

But I can’t hide my doubts either. Picking up the picture to illustrate the rule of thirds, I had to look through my photo library for a long time in search of the exact hit of the main object of the frame in the crosshairs. It turned out that I don’t have a lot of shots like this. I had to sit and analyze my shots and those of others.

Conclusion: In the cases when the frame is composed with the rule of thirds, the main thing often appears not in the center of the intersection of the lines of the division into thirds, but at some distance from them. I now tend to formulate this rule a little differently.

Objects placed at some distance from any of the four corners of the frame become a welcome lure to the viewer’s eye.

Here it is necessary to repeat the duty wisdom, which has not ceased to be the wisdom oft-repeated: rules are not laws. They are invented to deliberately and with impunity violate.

6. Fern.

The cropped sensor size of the Nikon D7000 is standard – an elongated rectangle. The subject did not fit into it. The picture comes to life only after the lower part of the frame is amputated. A square is better than a rectangle for this scene.

Nikon D7000 Camera.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2.8 ED N zoom.

Sensitivity 100 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/125 seconds.

Aperture 5.

Focal length 36 mm.

7. New Year’s rain.

There’s a flood in Venice. The waters of the lagoon splash out on the embankment, and passers-by move along the temporary bridges. The scene is strictly horizontal by virtue of the fact that the embankment and bridge in the foreground and even the complex of the church of San Giorgio on the island in the background stretch along the skyline. I cropped this file to remove the empty sky above and part of the sidewalk in the foreground below.

The deleted parts of the image did not contain any useful information. But it was possible to emphasize the resistance of the wind and rain, which the person with the umbrella overcame. The path behind the pedestrian seemed to be longer, but the scale of the figure itself didn’t diminish.

The elongated shape of the shot contributes to the illusion of a longer path. This is emphasized by the rhythmic division of the frame by the verticals of the bridge pillars. The figurine of a pedestrian is out of the correct rhythm of black rectangles, and the colored spot of a spherical umbrella leaves no doubt that nothing in this shot is more important than human persistence.

Nikon D3 Camera.

AF-S Nikkor 24-70/2 zoom.8 ED N.

Sensitivity 800 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/320 sec.

Aperture 3.5.

Exposure compensation +0.67 EV.

Focal length 60 mm.

8. Venice. Aqua Alta.

This area of Venice, not far from the Arsenal, is mostly inhabited by Venetians themselves. Few tourists. The streets flooded with water are empty. I was captivated by the colorful splotches of wet blooms on the walls. The frame could only be oriented vertically. The narrow streets of a small island town stretch upward like trees in a dense forest. A horizontal shot in such circumstances would have been ugly. I’ve been waiting for these construction workers for a long time. I wanted the presence of people to bring the image to life.

Nikon D3 camera.

AF-S 70-200/2 zoom.8 ED VR.

Sensitivity 800 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/160 sec.

Aperture 5.

Exposure compensation -0.67 EV.

Focal length 200mm.

9. Rule of thirds.

10. Swans.

Wedding Photography. Bride price. Bridesmaids examining the groom and his companions. The swan jumped out exactly to the left vertical line of the rule of thirds. His figure hanging in the air illustrates the proper composition.

Nikon D3 camera.

AF-S Nikkor 17-35/2 zoom.8 D ED IF.

Sensitivity 400 ISO.

Shutter speed 1/500 sec.

Aperture 7.1.

Exposure compensation -0.33 EV.

The focal length is 17mm.