One fascinating challenge of photography is the flatness of the medium. How can you capture reality when you can only press it into a crust of silver on a sheet of plastic? I have previously introduced the idea of using aperture settings to “slice” what you see into layers. This can give a strong sense of the relative depth of elements of a composition. Your viewer’s attention is literally focused on the most important part of the scene. You can also create a powerful illusion by including certain kinds of geometric elements in a frame. Diagonal lines in particular give strong depth cues. Just like the careful use of aperture settings they:

• draw the viewer’s attention to the distance between layers of an image and
• draw the viewer’s eye to important parts of the image.

Why?

Our visual systems are tuned to latch onto strong lines and we look to perspective information, for example lines that converge in the distance like the rails of a track, to give us clues about depth when we can’t get stereo information, that is cues derived from our seeing the world through two eyes separated by a short distance.

When you are photographing humans you aren’t primarily interested in straight lines so you don’t have to think about them except as supporting structures. This leaves you free to exploit the way the adult human visual system responds to them to create an illusion of depth.

If diagonal lines are part of physical barriers you will often be able to take advantage of such a constraint to bring more people into frame (or more heads at least) or use it as a the basis for a more interesting group arrangement, especially if you want to include horizontal elements in the image (a building for example) or superimpose them later. Look at this famous shot of The Beatles. In other releases that used this photo (or its equally famous echo), text was printed in the top left and bottom right corners of the record artwork.

To return to the subject of illusions of depth, have a look at the creepy dragon [requires a video plugin].

The length of a image divided by its width is its aspect ratio. The aspect ratio of standard 35mm film is one-and-a-half, that is 3:2. For televisions and for digital sensors it is often 4:3 (Four Thirds).

Interestingly, many useful compositional guidelines are also based around thirds and threes.

Most famously, many artists and photographers swear by the Rule Of Thirds—which is also explained here.

Even when you are interested in only two main subjects in an image, it can gain balance by the inclusion of a third defocused or cropped participant, or by a prominent inanimate object.

Father and Son: I

Father and Son: II

When you have three or more main subjects, triangular arrangments can be very effective.

If you want to give a sense of place and time to a picture of a person, forget trying to get the whole of the Millennium Wheel in the background. Well-chosen bracketing details can set your subjects in context and give your photos depth. Both of the following pictures were taken in Cambridge, the first in a college garden,

the second by the river.

Trying to cram in more of the view, by pulling back or zooming out, or trying to keep more of it in focus, by closing the aperture, would have left the pictures cluttered and the people in them diminished—literally and figuratively.

Neither image is particularly exciting or original, but they are kept warm and human by reducing the inanimate objects in them to sets, structuring the scenes rather than dominating them. For the first I used the lines of the college walls in the background and for the second I shot between two punting poles. The contexts are recognisable to anyone familiar with the city and still give hints to people coming to the photos “cold”.

Remember:

• Using static elements of the world to create frames within your photos can add depth.
• Usually those elements work better as frames if they are kept peripheral and defocused.
• If people are more important to you than things, let it show in your photographs by turning the things into a stage for the people.

When you are taking a portrait your aim usually is to capture the beauty and character of the person you are photographing.

Beginners commonly stand too far from their subjects, take a landscape (horizontal) shot of a single person in the centre of the frame, and leave the vast majority of the image to things that have nothing to do with their subject. Sometimes they do this to include a landmark in the background. Sometimes they do this because they feel they must photograph the full length of their subjects’ bodies. No one cares what your subject’s feet look like. Well, they don’t most of the time.

When people do care what your subject’s feet look like then just photograph her feet.

I’ll write about centres and sides and backgrounds and foregrounds later, but for now remember:

• Don’t be afraid of the edge of the photograph—but never let it cut your subject’s eyes.
• Don’t be afraid to invade your subject’s space to take his picture—but be prepared to distract him until you get a more natural shot.
• Don’t be afraid to let your subject dominate the image—he’s what it’s all about.

My photo above might have been improved by my moving slightly further away from the subject and leaving more space on the side of the frame he was looking towards.