Working through a composition
Most of my compositions involve first wandering about without my camera, or just my phone, seeing what's around and finding graphic elements to use as foregrounds, or even main subjects. The advantage of doing this is that I'm a lot more flexible in finding vantage points. I can move quickly looking for compositions. And rather than jumping in right away with the first thing I find, I look around to see if there's something more to my liking.
It's best to start this process well before good light begins to pressure you. For sunrise shots, I like to scout a location the day before so I know where I need to go ahead of time. Once I find something I want to work with, I grab my camera, using it hand-held, and start looking for my composition.
I use the camera hand-held at this point because it's simply a lot easier to move it around trying different vantage points rather than mounting it on the tripod and having to adjust the legs. The lesson here is to match the tripod height to the composition rather than matching the composition to a random tripod height. The series below illustrates my wandering thought process, showing what first grabbed my attention and how I worked to the final image that represents what caught my eye and what I liked. During this workshop, I took these images while talking my way through this composition with one of my students.
A landscape photo workflow
Getting started
In the first set below, the first two were made with my iPhone two days before we visited this location for a late afternoon shoot (click on any image to see a larger version). The third image is one where, after wandering a bit without my camera, I'm just starting to work on something that has caught my eye....
The hand-held search
Below, I'm starting to hone in on the foreground I've found to work with, a series of oblong shapes leading into the scene. In the horizontal image, I'm starting with a leading line from the lower left. In the next image, I'm moving closer to my foreground and still trying to use it as a diagonal leading line.
But this feels awkward.
Look at the background. the peak in the distance feels totally out of balance. Plus, the straight diagonal line created by the shapes just isn't all that appealing to me (I'm usually not attracted to lines like this anyway).
The next image tries the same diagonal leading line, only it's starting in the lower right. The problem for me is as before, but also, in this image it's not really clear what I liked about the scene, which was those oblong shapes.
The fourth image emphasizes the shapes I like, but I still find it awkward. But we're getting there.
Traditionally we try to avoid placing the main subject in the middle of the frame, but sometimes it works great. While I was moving the camera around, I tried placing these shapes I liked smack in the middle of the frame heading straight out to the background peak. This is when I got that "Ah, that's why I stopped here" feeling (Lesson here: go with what feels right).
At this point I'm still hand-holding the camera and moving around my foreground. I try getting lower or higher, closer or farther away, looking for the place I want to start fine tuning with the tripod.
Fine tuning
Then I set up the tripod as close as I can to the camera height I found. My student and I then start the fine tuning process. The first picture in this series was what we eventually came up with. At this point, the light is starting to get good. As the light is getting better, Instead of having my student set up her tripod and start from scratch, I had her plug into mine.
The third image is the camera rendition of my final image, The fourth image, after processing, is much closer to what I was seeing at the time.
The workflow
In general, here's my compositional workflow for a landscape image:
- Pre-scout if you can. Especially if you're planning a sunrise
- Scout the shot without a camera and tripod, maybe just your phone
- Once you find the general shot, grab your camera and use it hand-held to find your vantage point and lens choice
- When you think you've found your shot, set up your tripod to match your composition. (This can be the challenging part)
- Fine tune on the tripod, changing location and height as needed and lock in your composition
- Check the edges of the frame and look for distracting mergers and tilted horizon
- Only now do you need to consider exposure and focusing. Do what's needed to get the shot:
- Polarizer?
- Grad ND filter?
- Blend multiple exposures (hdr)?
- Hyperfocal focusing?
- Focus stacking?
- Trip the shutter
After a time, all this becomes second nature and you'll find that you spend most of your time (other than waiting for the light) just finding the spot from which you want to photograph. Tripod wrangling can take some time too, especially if you're not on even ground. For this image, setting up the the tripod didn't take much time at all. But try it on the edge of a stream or crammed between a couple of boulders!
