Out of the comfort zone
Part of my conversaions with those that sign up for my online class with the BPSOP is how to make the viewer an active participant when composing our photos.
Humans rely on on the perception of the environment that surrounds them, and we as photographers can manage what the viewer perceives and processes when looking at the information we lay out to him in the form of a photograph.
As Westerners we were brought up to read from left to right. As a result, that’s the way we perceive, from left to right; that’s our comfort zone.
While it’s always nice to keep the viewer in his or her comfort zone, sometimes it’s also good to take them out of that zone of contentment. How you ask? By composing your photos so the viewer has to go move from right to left instead of left to right.
In the above photo, I was at the lower level in the main train station in Berlin and immediately saw this Vanishing Point. I pointed it out to a few of the photographers that had signed up for my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet. A Vanishing Point a very important element of composition to move the viewer around the frame.
Standing in a position to shoot it from right to left, I didn’t have enough time to walk down and show people what it looked like from left to right. Take a look at the image now that I’ve flopped it in Photoshop.
The actual way we perceive
I certainly don’t condone doing this after the fact, it’s merely a way to show the power we have as photographers to control how the viewer perceives and processes our photos.
So, the next time your out and about with your camera, find a location and subject matter that you can compose either from left to right or right to left and see the amazing difference for yourself.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime. I just announced my New York, New York Workshop beginning September 17th ,2019 and ending at noon on the 23rd. This will be my second workshop there and this time we’ll be shooting in all the five boroughs.
JoeB
