the only thing to be observed, but in a picture which _may_ be
decorative, but _must_ be something more, we have expression as well
to consider. If decoration alone were to be regarded, something like
fixed rules might perhaps be tyrannically laid down, but in a
picture the implicit observance of rules of composition would be
certain to make itself seen in the result, and the undue
obtrusiveness of a code of rules would be as inimical to the
supremacy of ideas and feelings, as the excessive prominence of fact
would be, which has already been described.
Hence the difficulty in prescribing any definite course for the
beginner, because whilst to most instinctive artistic temperaments a
certain knowledge of or feeling for composition is natural, so soon
as this is reduced to definite rule and given to another, the, as it
were, secondhand use, is nearly certain to betray itself by its
misapplication. I would ask therefore that any suggestions given
here on the subject of composition should be taken as one takes
lessons in the rudiments of a language, which rudiments we violate
and forget so soon as we have become proficient enough to speak it.
_Such rules in composition should be observed only so far as to
avoid the appearance of having infringed or ignored them._
The rules of composition which may be found to apply in one of the
pictorial arts must necessarily apply equally in the others, and so
therefore to pictorial photography which at least aspires to be
considered an art. If on a sheet of paper a rectangular space is
given us wherein to draw the likeness of anything, the most natural
course to pursue would be to draw that figure in the centre or
thereabouts, and if then we are asked to add the likeness of two or
three more objects we should naturally place these near the first
object. Thus should we compose a group of objects which draw the
attention to the middle of the picture or space.
Suppose we are asked to draw the picture of a church tower we should
probably comply with the request somewhat as shown in fig. 1. Next
we will suppose we are asked to add a cottage, some trees, and a
path to the church, we should, if possessed of some sense of
symmetry and order, coupled with average intelligence, make the
additions somewhat as in fig. 2. It would surely be an unusual thing
to follow instead the course suggested by figs. 3 and 4.
In figs. 1 and 2 we have instinctively placed the primary object in
or near the centre, and the others near and around it, and the
result strikes one at once as being better composed, that is, more
symmetrical, than in fig. 4, in which amongst other things one is
not sure which object to regard as the principal one, and one also
feels that but for the boundaries of the picture left and right we
might have seen a good deal more beyond, which would have added to
the interest of the picture.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
In this we have one of the first rules in composition, namely, that
the principal object should be near the centre, and the next
important near to, and as it were supporting it, and no object
likely to attract the eye should be so near the edge of the picture
as to make us instantly conscious of the boundaries and wish to see
more beyond.
But now if in compliance with the supposed request we had made our
drawing as in fig. 5, might it not at once be felt by the observer
that we had put the objects in a central position _intentionally_,
which is equivalent to saying that we had allowed our endeavour to
observe the rule just laid down to betray itself. Fig. 2 is
preferable as being only just sufficiently symmetrical to avoid
being unsymmetrical, which is an example of what has already been
said about the necessity of observing rules of composition just so
far as to escape the appearance of having broken them.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
If this rule is right as regards voluntarily drawing a picture, it
is equally so in the case of a photograph, but instead of
deliberately placing things in such and such positions, we attain
the same end by moving the camera and selecting our point of view so
that the objects come into the positions desired.
Now suppose then, we have done this, but in doing it we are quite
unable to prevent other objects coming into the field of view and
occupying undesirable places near the margins of the picture, as for
instance in fig. 6. Here we are brought to consider another rule or
principle in composition, namely, that there must be one and only
one chief object in the picture, whereas in fig. 6, apart from the
gate and tree on the one side and the windmill on the other
attracting attention to the margins of the picture, these same
objects arrest the attention quite as much as the church, and we
feel the eye wandering about from one to the other and missing the
sensation of centralization and rest which fig. 2 gives.
If we were drawing or painting we should put in what we want and
then stop, we should omit or ignore what we did not require, but in
photography our powers in this direction are limited, and hence we
must as far as possible select those views, and only accept such, as
comply with what we feel to be right.
The angle of view included by different lenses is an auxiliary not
to be neglected, for by substituting a narrower angle lens, that is,
one of longer focus, we may cut off or leave out undesirable objects
which the shorter focus lens might include. Then again, when the
print is finished we can after careful consideration cut off what
would have been better left out, for it will be better to have a
picture half the size well composed, than double the number of
inches with a distracting and unsatisfactory arrangement of objects,
hence with many most successful workers it is no uncommon thing to
take quite a small portion of a negative, and either print it as it
is or else enlarge it up to the desired size, but mere size will
reckon as nothing as compared with pleasing composition.
If it is inexpedient to let the principal object or group of objects
occupy the exact centre of the picture, measured from left to right,
it is equally so if the centre be measured from top to bottom, and
hence we may formulate the rule (to be broken perhaps later when we
are strong enough to be independent of guiding) that the horizon
should not be allowed to come midway between the top and the base of
the picture.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.]
Remembering now that, as set forth in the earlier part of this
article, a picture should appeal to our feelings and stir our
emotions, it may be pointed out that in most ordinary things, and
certainly in the arts, the most powerful things are those which
possess _one_ dominant idea or feature, as in a piece of music the
refrain keeps recurring, a preacher takes a text, in a story there
is _one_ hero, and so forth, and in point of composition fig. 7 is
better than fig. 8, although the view is less comprehensive.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.]
It may not, however, always be easy for the beginner to determine
what is the chief object which should occupy the central position,
or which object or group to choose in a landscape.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.]
This brings us to speak of another important matter, and that is the
right disposition of lines which form the view or the selection of
view so that the lines formed by the component parts shall fall in a
desirable manner. The various objects in any view tend to form or
suggest lines, thus in fig. 9 the outline of the trees, the bank
along the shore, the clouds, and the boats suggest the lines shown
in the diagram, fig. 10, which lines all run the same way, but in
fig. 11 we have a similar view in which the lines suggested
counterbalance each other, and not only so, but by their convergence
they carry the eye to a spot near the centre, and so make the boat,
although not very large nor conspicuous, the one and principal
object (see diagram fig. 12).
[Illustration: Fig. 11.]
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
For the sake of training one's perceptions look at any good
pictures, and in your mind resolve them into line diagrams and see
how these lines fall, and in considering any landscape or other
subject to be photographed make up your mind as to what lines are
suggested, and then select your point of view so that these lines
balance or are symmetrical in arrangement, and also that they
converge towards some point well within the picture, and near the
centre of it.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.]
But in fig. 13 we have a subject in part well composed, but the
composition is spoilt because of the line formed by the road and
fence, which seem to cut the picture in two, whereas could we have
chosen the same subject from a point of view giving such an
arrangement as fig. 14, a difference is at once felt and a more
pleasing effect gained.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.]
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
Lines which seem to separate us from the picture and cut off one
part from another must be carefully avoided, and an endeavour to
find something which will, as it were, lead the eye into the
picture, should be diligently sought for, and indeed a subject,
however it may interest us, must often be abandoned if it lacks
those things which go to make pleasing composition, remembering as
we should always do that in pictorial work the fact that objects are
curious, or interesting, or pretty, has nothing to do with the case,
but that they are only to be valued according as they act as media
for expressing pleasing ideas, beautiful thoughts and sentiments,
which they will not do if some part creates a feeling of unpleasing
arrangement or design. If a scene does not compose well, we should
as pictorial workers feel no desire to reproduce it. But you may say
"Cannot we often by changing our point of view get an otherwise
ill-composed subject to compose well?" Most decidedly, that is
precisely what we should do, but it is no longer the same subject or
view.
And now let me say that it is often surprising how much alteration
may be made by changing our position. Figs. 15 and 16 are together
an instance of this, the outline here given being made from a pencil
sketch made on the spot, whilst figs. 17 and 18 are examples of the
desirable change brought about by watching and waiting for a change
in the position of light and the condition of the river's tide.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
Where the beginner most often fails is in taking things as they are
without pausing to consider whether they might not be improved, and
if so in what way, and then patiently searching to see if such
better way can be found.
Pictorial success will as often as not depend on the exercise of
fastidious taste, which is satisfied with nothing but the very best,
and not quite content even then.
A great deal more might usefully be said with reference to the
composition of lines if space would permit, but this general
reference may be given as a sort of summing up.
If the disposition of the lines constitutes such a perfectly
symmetrical design that it is at once recognised as symmetrical,
then it is wrong, because the artifice by which pleasing composition
is attained is betrayed, and we feel the thing to be artificial. If,
on the other hand, the lines fall so as to make the beholder
conscious of their presence, as, for instance, cutting off a portion
of the subject or presenting a one-sided appearance, again it is
wrong. _In neither case should the lines or the objects suggesting
them be felt at all until sought for, neither as being very right or
very wrong._
In art it is a maxim that the means by which the thing is done
should not proclaim itself, and hence it must apply to pictorial
photography, which is an effort after the artistic. A composition
should please without our quite knowing why, and without our being
able to see the machinery, as it were, by which our pleasurable
sensations are set in motion.
But whilst it is convenient to speak of _lines_ in the landscape, it
is only a manner of speaking, for, as we know very well,
photography, unlike pen drawing, has to do with "tones," that is,
_masses_ of light and shade. Now the general rules suggested as
regards the arrangement of lines, apply in much the same way if we
regard a picture (as we should do) as consisting of masses of light
and shade.
If when standing before a picture we close the eyes and then
suddenly open them, our attention is certain to be drawn to the
highest light or the deepest shadow, and hence, as a general rule,
whichever of these is the strongest to attract attention, that
should be in or near the principal object (indeed it will make of
itself the principal object), and should therefore be well removed
from the margins of the picture.
Refer back to fig. 8, in which the light patch of sky, the light in
the water and the two clusters of light rushes, all form competing
points of attraction, and if these are too near the margins, they
remind us of those margins, hence the improvement in effect when
these are cut away or left out.
But disposing of the highest light and deepest dark does not finish
the matter. There is a certain relative degree of lightness and
darkness between everything in nature. Moreover, colours have to be
interpreted by certain degrees of light and shade according to the
distance objects are away from us, and according to the amount of
light falling on them.
Such relative lightness and darkness is called "_tone_." The word
used in this sense has nothing to do with "tone" as applied to the
colour of a print, which colour we change by a process we call
"toning," and upon the correct rendering of relative tones so much
of the effect of a picture depends, and so much of its emotional
qualities.
Generally speaking, although there are often exceptions, the further
an object is from us the grayer it seems. White becomes less white,
and dark objects grow less dark, until in the distance both, under
ordinary circumstances, come almost to the same "tone," and we see
the distance only as a gray hazy mass.
If for a subject we have a figure of a woman by a stream of water
and we make an under-exposed negative of it, or develop the negative
to too great a density, we shall very likely have a print in which
the water and the woman's apron and cap come very much whiter with
regard to the rest of the subject than ever they appear in nature,
whilst the distance will very likely come too dark. Here we show a
disregard for the correct rendering of relative tones and the effect
is hard and harsh, unlike nature. We must therefore endeavour, both
in exposure and development and printing, to preserve relative tones
exactly as they are in nature, and constant study and observation of
nature should be carried on in order that the eye may be trained to
know how things come relatively in nature, and so be able to decide
at a glance if the photograph is good.
Ultimate success, by the way, often depends less on knowing what to
take and how to take it than on a well-trained judgment which knows
what is good or bad when we have taken it.
Whilst the mere lines or forms of objects may impart some amount of
feeling and sentiment to a scene, inasmuch as there is restfulness
and repose in the long horizontal lines of the river-side pastures,
something rhythmical in the sinuous curves of the winding stream, or
vigour and variety in the irregular forms of the rugged cliffs and
so on, yet the ideas and feelings which the picture will promote
depend more on the lights and shades, and the masses contrasting or
merging each with each.
But Nature does not always present herself in pleasingly arranged
masses, and is consequently at such times commonplace and
unpicturesque in the literal sense of the word. At such times she
will not attract the pictorial worker any more than she will when
perchance the lines and groupings are unsuitable.
The landscape which basks under the full blaze of sun, glittering
throughout every inch with a myriad twinkling lights and sharp
details, awakens no feeling akin to those which probably everyone
feels when in the twilight of evening plane after plane recedes as
one broad flat tint behind the other. Under the bright light of day
we may wonder at the richness and plenty upon the earth, we may
rejoice in that there are so many curious and pretty things to look
at, but these are like the feelings inspired by reading a book on
natural history, rather than the emotions created by the perusal of
a poem, or listening to sweet music.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.]
Compare for a moment the two photographs, fig. 19 and fig. 20.
The first is by no means an extreme case of the ordinary photograph,
and notice that although the composition is fairly good as far as
grouping goes, there is an absence of any quality which might make
one feel anything outside the bare recognition of the facts
depicted, but the second, if it be good at all, must depend for
admiration on a certain amount of sentiment which it suggests or
creates. You will notice that in the first there is no sense of
distance, and although a church tower, behind the masts of the
boats, is half a mile or so away it does not possess the "tone" and
veiling of atmosphere which would make it appear distant. Every part
of the view seems equally near, or nearly so; the eye wanders over
the whole, alighting on details here and there which interest and
amuse, yet there is an absence of just that breadth which is
noticeably present in the second example.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.]
Now let it be distinctly understood that detail, its omission or
suppression, and its introduction or sharp delineation, is not a
question of lens focus only, or even chiefly, but it is largely a
question of light. Imagine the photograph, fig. 19, with the greater
part of the detail taken out so that the quay, the houses, the
shore, etc. were just broad masses of lighter or darker tone, should
we not then get a composition which would be less disturbing, more
compact, more concentrated in interest? Is not this the case in fig.
20, in which detail is almost entirely absent? And yet detail could
not have been truthfully introduced in this photograph, because with
the light in the position it is, and in the misty evening air, _no
detail was there to reproduce_; it was the fact that objects ranged
themselves in masses one against the other, leaving room for
imagination and creating ideas that determined its selection and its
consequent portrayal.
In many cases a clear and sharp delineation of details will perhaps
be desirable, not, however, for the sake of showing detail, but just
so far as the production of the effect may require; on the other
hand, just the full amount of detail that a lens will give is by no
means always wanted.
_Lenses were not invented for pictorial purposes_, and therefore
there is no reason for concluding that what the lens gives is
necessarily right, for remember that we started with the distinct
understanding that we were merely _applying_ to a certain purpose
just so much of the photographic process as we considered we needed;
because I have the means of travelling at sixty miles an hour there
is no reason why I should not apply the same means of locomotion to
coaching a pedestrian at a tenth of that speed if I choose. It may
be said that in the two photographs referred to the comparison is
not a fair one, because so much depends on the sky. Granted that
much in the second example does depend on the sky, which is an
essential part of the picture, and indeed one cause of its very
existence, but in the other (fig. 19) the presence of clouds would
not improve the pictorial faults to which reference has been made.
As a mere record or portrayal of Old Woodbridge Quay, the absence
of clouds is as much a characteristic of its particular species, as
the clouds in the second one are inseparable from its existence.
So, but little more than half hinting at the principles involved in
the due suppression of unnecessary details, and the elimination of
undesirable objects in order to obtain breadth, and having said but
little as to the preservation of correct relative values or tones, I
must pass on.
Every corner of nature's broad expanse is, as it were, enveloped in
atmosphere, and invisible as we are commonly in the habit of
considering it to be, it affects to a greater or less degree
everything we see, and the visible atmosphere is often responsible
for some of nature's most beautiful and most appealing aspects.
Obviously then we cannot afford to leave out so important a
contributory to picturesque effect, and it is on this account rather
than on account of sharp or un-sharp detail that the question of
stops and lens apertures comes in.
Look at the image of a landscape on a moderately hazy day, as it
appears on the ground-glass focussing screen of your camera, using
the lens at full aperture--then quickly insert _f_/32, and notice
the difference. Not alone have objects near at hand and more remote
become more sharply or more equally defined, but you may also notice
that objects are _more brilliant_, and that a sense of atmosphere
has been cut out.
Compare if you will two photographs, the one made respectively with
full aperture of _f_/6 or _f_/8 and the other made with _f_/32 or
_f_/45, and provided that in the first case we have not actual
blurring to the extent of destroying form and structure, does not
the first remind you more of nature? I do not say it is so
instructive, so surprising, so dainty, or of such exquisite finish,
but is it not more reminiscent of the _effects_ we remember to have
seen and _felt_ in nature. It is not the function of this article to
say to what optical laws this difference is due, and yet the student
may expect to receive something by way of practical working
instructions.
My recommendation is then to use a single landscape lens or the
single combination of a doublet, and in starting to use the full
aperture.
With this it may be that when the foreground is moderately sharp,
trees more remote are so ill defined as to appear as a collection of
little blots and irregular patches. Whilst sharp detail in all
places may not be productive of pictorial effect, yet the extreme
opposite will be displeasing in another way, and it will be best to
secure just _so much definition and no more_ as shall save the
representation from appearing to have been wilfully put out of
focus--once let the destruction of detail be obvious and we betray
the artifice by which we are working, which is just what we should
avoid.
In the case just supposed then, we may now introduce the first stop,
simultaneously racking the lens in a little until we get middle
distance without unpleasantly obvious blurring. The foreground may
be a little out of focus, and in practice I find it is rather
helpful to general effect if detail is sacrificed more in the
foreground than in the middle distance.
This I believe is contrary to the teaching of many, but my feeling
is that with a sharply defined foreground the eye is attracted and
the interest so far arrested, that it is difficult to travel further
and enter into the poetry and sentiment of the scene beyond.
Wide-angle lenses have a double disadvantage, shared in part by
so-called rapid rectilinear doublet lenses. In the first place they
flatten the view, bringing distant planes to appear as near as the
nearer ones, and by including a comparatively wide angle they bring
into the plane of the foreground, objects so near that they appear
out of proportion, and hence proportions are false when judged as
the observer must judge by the standard of visual perspective.
A long-focus, narrow-angle lens necessitates a camera which racks
out to a considerable length, and probably a greater extension than
any camera in the ordinary way can give, would be an advantage on
some occasions.
Passing reference has been made to the interpretation of colours in
nature in their true relative value of black and white.
If we have a subject in which brilliant orange-coloured rushes in
autumn are seen as glowing bright against a background of dark blue
water, and the rushes made still more golden of hue by the ruddy
rays of a sinking sun, a difficult case is before us.