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Visual Chaos: the art of complexity in your compositions |
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Written by David Beckstead
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The normal human visual field extends to approximately 60 degrees nasally (toward the nose, or inward) in each eye, to 100 degrees temporally (away from the nose, or outwards), and approximately 60 degrees above and 75 below the horizontal meridian.Yet are you really understanding all you see within that broad field of vision? Of course not. You have to focus on a smaller area within that field of view, and then concentrate on that smaller area or subject. There is no way to really take it all in at once and understand all you see.Photographic composition is the arrangement of visual elements within a frame. It is the product of a photographer’s vision and skill in seeing, identifying, arranging, and framing the finished image. What we 'see' is often visually chaotic. Our jobs as pros is to harness this chaos!
I define Visual Chaos like this:
Visual chaos is the intersecting natural and architectural lines that form all around the subject. The placement of the subject or the angle of the photographer, dictates the balance or imbalance of the composition with regard to the visual chaos. Balance is best.
Eliminating all the chaos is not necessarily the best goal. Giving the viewer some complexity to explore often holds their attention.
Simplifying the composition to one or 2 compositional elements, ridding the frame of all chaos can make for a strong image or also make for an image that will not hold the viewers attention. We will explore this visually in this article.
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David Beckstead |
| About the author: |
| Current Author Promotion: Find out more about David's Current Worshop "Shoot With Beckstead" David Beckstead was named “The Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the World” by American Photo magazine - March 2007 issue. David is truly a mountain man at heart! He has traveled to over 65 countries and almost every state in the US. He has hiked thousands of miles of backcountry, including above the base camp of Mt. Everest. He was one of the first registered trackers for Arizona Search and Rescue, worked for the US Forest Service for 12 summers as a Hotshot firefighter fighting fires around the US and Canada, all the while carrying a Nikon SLR with a 50 mm 1.8 lens. David is a fine art watercolor painter and lover of all things artistic. |
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