"Photography Composition: The Definitive Guide"

[KLaban]

I've looked high and low for a copy of the tome Photography: The Rules. Couldn't find one anywhere but got in touch with a very elderly gentleman whose father recalled seeing one in his youth. Apparently all he could remember about it was rule Number One There are no rules.

[amolitor]

There are many books with rules IN them Just look in the remainder bin of any large bookstore for how-to-take-photos books!

I have noticed that the lower down the food chain you go, the more rules there are in the books. If it has some smiling jackass on the front holding a big black camera, you can bet that it will tell you more than you want to know about the Golden Spiral, and of course web sites are usually quite close to 100% this sort of thing. As you go up to more scholarly, more serious, more, dare I say it, artistic, books you will find nothing of this.

[elliot_n]

Show me a kitchen without a recipe book.

Or a pastry chef who doesn't measure ingredients.

[Martin Kristiansen]

Show me a kitchen without a recipe book.

Or a pastry chef who doesn't measure ingredients.

Or a photaographer unable to articulate any useful information about how composition works.

[amolitor]

Why do people keep insisting that I am against recipes for cooking things? I never said that.

Seriously. Post #19. Go read ALL THE WORDS and think a little bit. It's not that hard.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

"cooler colors seem farther away" strikes me as a classic "rule" of the sort that's simply wrong. I mean, there *might* be a paper somewhere that outlines a careful study, but I have not seen it, and it doesn't pop up on google, and I have mislaid my copy of Arnheim...

Google “warm colors advance cool recede.” There are pages of links.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Why do people keep insisting that I am against recipes for cooking things? I never said that...

Then you must be the most misunderstood poster in the history of LuLa. You argue you never said something, people quote you, you argue you didn’t mean that.

You either have to teach us how to read your mind (maybe even write a primer on that) or learn how to express yourself clearly (there are primers for that too). You are obviously missing the talent for that.

[elliot_n]

Why do people keep insisting that I am against recipes for cooking things? I never said that.

Good. I hope we can all agree that algorithms (i.e. recipes) are central to cookery, both amateur and professional.

Seriously. Post #19. Go read ALL THE WORDS and think a little bit. It's not that hard.

Ok. So you're talking about a truly 'new' pastry; not a chocolate eclair, a ring doughnut, or an almond slice, but something unheard of. By definition, that won't be found in a recipe book. However it seems unlikely that anyone up to the task would not have had a solid grounding in following recipes.

Many photographers are happy to make the equivalent of chocolate eclairs. The linked article on composition seems harmless enough (and is not entirely uninteresting). It won't be of much use if you want to be a contemporary artist, but it could help you pick up some gongs at your local camera club. I don't understand why it's causing so much aggro.

[amolitor]

Precisely so, Elliot.

And thank you for re-reading and grasping my point, in spite of my querulous tone! An unexpected delight, and one I did not earn.

[KLaban]

Just look in the remainder bin of any large bookstore for how-to-take-photos books!

Or charity shops in the clown clone tome section.

;-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Seems to me that teaching rules (of composition, among others) is not too far from raising kids, especially teenagers. You try to instill some wisdom and experience, but all you get is an indifferent stare, if they even heard you behind the earbuds and headphones. Or, at best, "Yeah, dad, whatever" or "Cool story, bro." They might ignore you, mock you, curse you even.

At some point in the future (be it the next day or years later), you realize they actually heard you, internalized it, and even acted on it. And sometimes they would even admit it: "That's how you raised me, dad." And you think: "Really? You actually heard me and remembered it from (days, months) years ago? Wow!"

[RSL]

I'm sure glad we got rid of politics. Now there's nothing on LuLa that could lead to an argument.

[KLaban]

I'm sure glad we got rid of politics. Now there's nothing on LuLa that could lead to an argument.

Hey, Russ, there's always someone who's wrong on the web thingy who needs correcting.

;-)

[Rob C]

Good. I hope we can all agree that algorithms (i.e. recipes) are central to cookery, both amateur and professional.

Ok. So you're talking about a truly 'new' pastry; not a chocolate eclair, a ring doughnut, or an almond slice, but something unheard of. By definition, that won't be found in a recipe book. However it seems unlikely that anyone up to the task would not have had a solid grounding in following recipes.

Many photographers are happy to make the equivalent of chocolate eclairs. The linked article on composition seems harmless enough (and is not entirely uninteresting). It won't be of much use if you want to be a contemporary artist, but it could help you pick up some gongs at your local camera club. I don't understand why it's causing so much aggro.

Now you've said something!

The slight extrapolation into photography explains it all.

No more worrying about that vexatious thing called originality or even, dare I mention  it - cousin-once-removed art!

But then we won't even need the manual, just the cookie cutter and a bag of pre-mix gunge. Once upon a time you could even buy pre-exposd film to develop all by yourself! I think those products might have been marketed to the terminally shy male. (As this was before the era of gay abandon, I don't think women would have been expected to send in the vouchers.)

;-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I'm sure the women really dig that, when you speak romance... ;-p

Pillow talk they do dig

I assume you meant the above in a humorous way. In case you didn't:

[Rob C]

Pillow talk they do dig

I assume you meant the above in a humorous way. In case you didn't:

Sometimes, anything to delay the inevitable.

Funny about the male: no sooner does he get expelled from one, but he then spends most of the rest of his life trying to get back into one. Quite often, hindsight can be so very cruel.

I wonder what's on tv tonight.

;-)

[Rob C]

You started a great thread, welly!

[32BT]

Pillow talk they do dig

I assume you meant the above in a humorous way. In case you didn't:

Yes, i did, though escpecially because of the ambiguities and colloquialism associated with it. Think about the rules that would be required to even remotely start to understand what is written there...

[Farmer]

Why do people keep insisting that I am against recipes for cooking things? I never said that.

Seriously. Post #19. Go read ALL THE WORDS and think a little bit. It's not that hard.

Why do you keep pointing to a single post as if it was made in isolation and not a follow on from your first post which set the context of your argument?

"The desire to turn composition into an algorithm, a set of rules, is positively a plague in photography."

And, yes, in #19 you are suggesting that originality cannot come from an algorithm, but you continued to gloss over (perhaps with an egg wash?) that part where the artist has learned prior to the point of original concept and that there is value in that.  There is value in a priming.  There's value in learning "rules" (and the term is poor, certainly, just as "laws" was a poor term in science).  They give you a simple template to explain why certain things are commonly effective.  If you have no concept of 1/focal length (before we had IS in various forms) then the basic physics of photography are going to confound your artistic attempts.  An artist has control over their tools in order to bring to life their vision.  Primers tell you about the tools and in ways that relate to artistic interpretation.  They help you to grasp primary relationships and from there you can expand.

So having made your initial assault on the piece and in "algorithmic" approaches, we have all read ALL THE WORDS that you have written in their context.  Not just the ones where you choose a pretty average analogy.  That's why your message is confused, because you seem to forgotten ALL THE WORDS that you wrote in the first instance.

[Farmer]

Google “warm colors advance cool recede.” There are pages of links.

Indeed.  Even in choosing a paper and looking at the white point, cool and warm makes quite the difference in presenting depth (or lack thereof).  Of course, if someone wants to print dozens or hundreds of prints to work it out for themselves instead of reading a primer, that's their call and good luck to them.  Knowing that there is a possible impact in the first instance, though, seems far more likely to set free a creative spirit and provide a better base from which to achieve a particularly artistic vision.

Sometimes I think that the folks who eschew these things feel that they are very special keepers of ancient wisdom.  The irony, of course, is that if you can't explain it to others effectively then you probably haven't actually mastered it (you or someone else said pretty much this earlier).