Composition for discussion

[macmaam]

I was playing with my new strobes , and took this throwaway shot of the junk on the buffet. Ordinarily, a dominant object smack in the center of the frame in an asymmetrical composition would drive me bonkers. In this shot, though, i don't really notice it. I took some time to try to figure out why, and i thought maybe you all would like to play along.

Some of the questions i pondered along the way were:
Does it balance, anyway?
Does the foreground arrangement break up/play off of the centered lamp?
Do the lamp and it's reflection read as one object?

What do you think? Does it bug you? If not, why not?

[Michele]

I will give it my best shot, but will not be able to answer all your questions.. I apologize for that.

I don't think this photo is balanced at all and I feel this composition doesn't work. When you balance out a photo, you should be able to draw a line down center line either horizontal or vertical and have items equal on each side (amount balance out on each side). However, you don't always need a photo to be balanced.

I feel like there isn't a nice flow here and you have a few items cropped off. I would probably remove the hanging photo on the back wall or make it more included. I would have included the full reflection in the photo since that seems to be the main subject here (lamp & lamp reflection).

This isn't very easy to explain and its hard when I know what I see, but then to put it into words and explain is another story. You do have very nice lighting and colors with good clarity overall.. Keep up the good work and try different angles here...

Michele

[Jon]

I too would like to see the full reflection of the lamp, that's really the only thing that bugs me.

It's not balanced...But it doesn't have to be, either. One of the things that leads the eye around an image is its off-balance charateristics.

I personally think that it's set up well, and the uneveness doesn't bother me a bit - mostly because, even though the lamp is the dominant feature of the image, the other features of the image "step up" to it, rather than blank buffet and then *BAM* there's the lamp.

To add, I think it would be improved if:

The chair were moved out of the frame
The cup and saucer were moved closer to the butter dish
The crop was moved to the left a bit, the right edge going along the frame of the painting and including the lamps reflection.

But then, that would make it a totally different image now, wouldn't it?

[Jim Sykes]

One thing that bothers me the most is the shadow of the lamp on the wall. i would have tried to work with the lighting to avoid that shadow, its one of the first things I see.

As to the composition, I think that having moved left to get the entire mirror and reflection in the photo would have worked better, also getting rid of the picture on the wall or getting it all in the frame would have been nice and I also want to see what is on the table to the left that you just cut off.

[Jon]

I dunno about the shadows Jim - I mean, I see what you're saying, but don't you think the shadows from the objects give the image some depth? The only bit of shadow that really bugs me enough to mention it is the shadow of the lampshade on itself, in the reflection.

[macmaam]

Sorry, responders, i had given up this thread for dead. Good for you for taking the time to take a look and think about what you were seeing.

The only reason i pointed the camera where i did in the first place was because of all the different types of surfaces--i wanted to see what kind of reflections i would get. It only struck me later that the lamp was in the center, and then that there was something about that that worked. I had already come to my own conclusions about why the centered lamp seemed all right to me in this one, but you raised some interesting points.

The lamp shadow: i really like the bottom part of it, but now that it's been pointed out, that top part of it is really a sore thumb.

The chair: Even though it adds nothing, in this shot--from a purely compositional point of view--i think removing the chair would really throw this off-balance. It adds a bit of visual weight in that corner. It might be interesting to have it about 6" higher...

Cup & saucer: I can see that it would work better if connected to the forms in front of and behind it, but it adds a lot of weight where it is, and i think pushing it to the left would wreak havoc with the balance that exists.

Here's what i decided about why the centered lamp doesn't bother me as it should: the lines of the shade, if extended, encompass all the bits of junk. The bits of junk, as a group, roughly mimic the shape of the shade. The three whitish things across the top almost read as a single unit. The empty area provides a rest from the busy-ness, the size provides some balance to the other side, and is an interestingly shaped negative space.

Maybe i will try to arrange the things, following your suggestions, and take another shot of it. We could make it into a series, until we arrived at a perfect composition. Thanks again for taking part in this exercise. I hope we all grew a little from it!