This is how it's done

[mugge]

Taken on a recent trip. I really liked the interaction between mother and child. C&C most welcome

This is how it's done by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[Urbanflyer]

Taken on a recent trip. I really liked the interaction between mother and child. C&C most welcome

This is how it's done by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

As a Mom, this warmed my heart! Color?

[lovelife65]

Fantastic!

[Manfred M]

A couple of thoughts for you. There have been a number of studies that seem to show that in certain societies (ours is one of them), we scan from the bottom left corner of the document and move towards the top right. Establishing the subject in a shot like this so that it is closer to the left edge gives us a completely different view of the shot and in general, we will look at the composition being stronger for this reason.

If one flips the image horizontally, one gets:




The other aspect in an image like this one is the use of negative space. In part this is personal taste, but in part it impacts the balance of the image. Too much has a negative impact and not enough has negative impact on the composition too.

[Tronhard]

First I really like the image and its use of space. It has a softness and gentleness that is very appealing.

Personally, I must admit I am more comfortable with the second one and in the context of Manfred's insights I was wondering about that.

I had understood that for countries that read right to left, if one considers the rule of thirds we favour the subject to be in the first column we come to - hence perhaps my preference for the second one...

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured and processed.

[mugge]

Manfred and Trev is correct, will flip.
Cheers Ole

[zen]

A couple of thoughts for you. There have been a number of studies that seem to show that in certain societies (ours is one of them), we scan from the bottom left corner of the document and move towards the top right. Establishing the subject in a shot like this so that it is closer to the left edge gives us a completely different view of the shot and in general, we will look at the composition being stronger for this reason.

Manfred, I was told of this lower left to upper right notion a dozen years ago by the presenter of a brief program on wildlife photography. Not knowing any different, I adopted it. Since then, I've asked other instructors their opinion, including a few nationally known togs who have presented at the CanAm Expo in Buffalo/Niag Falls, and almost all have denied it. Nonetheless, I have come to subconsciously compose with that rule in mind. There are, of course, many times when the "rule" cannot and will not work very well, but generally I have found the images more pleasing when the rule is applied.

I'm glad to see someone of your experience and credibility give it credence. Thanks.

Zen

[Tronhard]

I think, like many learned habits - and reading in one direction or another is certainly that - it depends on the society that one belongs to. I was talking to some folks from the middle east who do not have a lot of experience in reading a lot of European (L-R) script, and they had to work at that a bit. I suspect I would have to fight my ingrained tendencies as well.

I have also experienced proponents of the favour-the-left-side-bias who link it to whether one is right or left handed! Apparently if we are right-handed we like to have space to give our favoured hand "room". Who knows...

[Manfred M]

[QUOTE=zen;703510]

A couple of thoughts for you. There have been a number of studies that seem to show that in certain societies (ours is one of them), we scan from the bottom left corner of the document and move towards the top right. Establishing the subject in a shot like this so that it is closer to the left edge gives us a completely different view of the shot and in general, we will look at the composition being stronger for this reason.



Manfred, I was told of this lower left to upper right notion a dozen years ago by the presenter of a brief program on wildlife photography. Not knowing any different, I adopted it. Since then, I've asked other instructors their opinion, including a few nationally known togs who have presented at the CanAm Expo in Buffalo/Niag Falls, and almost all have denied it. Nonetheless, I have come to subconsciously compose with that rule in mind. There are, of course, many times when the "rule" cannot and will not work very well, but generally I have found the images more pleasing when the rule is applied.

I'm glad to see someone of your experience and credibility give it credence. Thanks.

Zen

I had heard this from a number of photographic sources as well and have had others suggest it is not true.

Around 10 years ago I was involved in the design of a new piece of equipment that was planned for wide-spread deployment to somewhere around 10,000 employees across the country. We were proposing a radial change in the way work was being done, so some of the senior executives at the company were concerned that this radical change could result in quality problems if we deployed the solution. Employees were required to scan / read something and then use the information from reading to determine the correct operation based on this.

Literature suggested the left to right, bottom to top eye movement / scanning, so we determined to see if this was in fact the case. We had a sizable number (for statistical significance reasons) of experienced employees as well as a control group of people who had not done this type of work. We set up video cameras and tracked eye movement and found that both groups scanned the data in the same way; left to right, bottom to top. While we discovered some other interesting outcomes from the study, but the way people scanned for data was consistent. All members of the group had done their schooling in Canada in either French or English (this is the main population of employee), so I don't know if people who read in other directions (Hebrew or Japanese for example) also scan data in this way.

As for Trevor's thoughts on left-hand versus right-hand bias, we did not find this to be the case. Our sample populations had somewhere around an 80:20 right hand / left hand split.

[DanK]

Fascinating. It wouldn't be that hard to do an experiment to test whether reading direction is the root of this, if one had gobs of money and time and access to relevant populations. I think it might actually not be that easy to find the right sample of right-to-left readers because so many spend a lot of time reading English as well.

But for whatever reason, I find the effect very strong in this image, more than in some others that I have flipped myself. For reasons I can't explain, it seems balanced this way but not in the original. The negative space on the right seems natural. Beats me why, but this will remind me to try flipping more often.

[Tronhard]

Nah, just go over to the subjects and tell them to turn around!

[george013]

I don't think a reading direction is involved here. It's a rather empty picture with just one subject in it. Like a white wall with a black spot in it. My attention is drawn directly to it. Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean anything negative about the picture. It's wonderful.
Something else is bothering me, the direction of the woman as the main subject. It's directed outside the frame.
I can't change that by flipping or so. If Ole had taken that picture with the subject on the left that would be different: the direction would be going inside the frame and giving that "empty space" more meaning.

George

[Tronhard]

I don't think a reading direction is involved here. It's a rather empty picture with just one subject in it. Like a white wall with a black spot in it. My attention is drawn directly to it. Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean anything negative about the picture. It's wonderful.
Something else is bothering me, the direction of the woman as the main subject. It's directed outside the frame.
I can't change that by flipping or so. If Ole had taken that picture with the subject on the left that would be different: the direction would be going inside the frame and giving that "empty space" more meaning.

George

George I don't see that the woman is actually directed outward, it's downwards towards the child who is himself facing into the picture and back to his mum - to me it's a sort of tiny closed loop...

[george013]

George I don't see that the woman is actually directed outward, it's downwards towards the child who is himself facing into the picture and back to his mum - to me it's a sort of tiny closed loop...

She is directed downwards and to the right, outside. Take 2 peaces of paper and frame that picture vertical, let's say once with the woman on the left side and than with an equal amount of space on the right side. You'll see/feel the difference. You can repeat it with a flipped picture. By making that "empty space" smaller you strengthen that feeling I mean.
I don't know exactly how to explain, but the direction is important.Directing away of that empty space does exclude it, directing towards it includes it.

George

[Tronhard]

George I am honestly not trying to be difficult, but it seems to me she is looking at the board and the child - when I try to expand the image that I downloaded to clarify the image, I just get pixelations...

To me, one possible indicator is her lock of hair. Normally hair falls straight downwards and the way her hair is located it appears to me that her head is angled, indicating she is looking close to straight down, which would make sense if she is focused on her child.

Still, you may well be right about the space, and while I absolutely respect your preference, for me I think either way has some merit.

[george013]

George I am honestly not trying to be difficult, but it seems to me she is looking at the board and the child - when I try to expand the image that I downloaded to clarify the image, I just get pixelations...

To me, one possible indicator is her lock of hair. Normally hair falls straight downwards and the way her hair is located it appears to me that her head is angled, indicating she is looking close to straight down, which would make sense if she is focused on her child.

Still, you may well be right about the space, and while I absolutely respect your preference, for me I think either way has some merit.

Not looking outside but her body is directed to the outside. You only see one arm. Have a look at old portrait paintings. When the portrait is out of the centre the look, the direction, is going in the frame. Or other paintings or photo's.
The picture is gone.

George

[DanK]

I think this thread is now about two different topics.

I agree with George: the woman's body is clearly angled away from the negative space. Often, one wants the reverse. George pointed to old portrait paintings, in which if there is negative space, the main subject is often pointed in that direction. The same is true of bug macros: the images look out of balance if the negative space is behind the bug.

However, I don't think that is too much of an issue in an image like this, and I think it is different from the issue Manfred pointed to. I think you could replace the people with a featureless black shape and have the same result: the image would feel more balanced if the negative space were on the right. I'm just taking a very short break now, so I don't have time to try it now.

[Manfred M]

I think this thread is now about two different topics.

Agreed.

Issue one is the left / hand right hand issue, which is easy to fix in this shot.

The other is what George has brought up, and that is where having the subject is directed into the frame, is generally a stronger composition. In this case, that is "major surgery" on this image.

Both points are worth considering and as always, these photographic "rules" won't always hold. In this example, is suspect that they do.

[Tronhard]

Not looking outside but her body is directed to the outside. You only see one arm. Have a look at old portrait paintings. When the portrait is out of the centre the look, the direction, is going in the frame. Or other paintings or photo's.
The picture is gone.

George

Looking at her posture I would say that she has her outside hand on her knee, bracing her back from unsupported forward flexion, (you can see how her robe is pushed upwards to allow her to do so). Her inside hand and arm are lowered to pull on the board, which is a perfectly natural thing to do. The effect is certainly to rotate the alignment of the closer shoulder, but personally it doesn't disturb me that much - I think I automatically felt that despite that, her attention was on the child. As I said if it does to you I can see why you would want to crop to make her "face" the centre of the image, but as we agree that will make it a different image.