[Lunatique]

I'm beginning to think that composition, and along with other things like color sense, are definitely a natural ability that some people are born with (brain wired a certain way).

Recently, when I handed my old camera down to Elena, she started taking pictures with it. Although she had no training in art, or any other creative endeavors at all, her sense of composition is very good, sometimes better than mine when we happen to take photos of the same scenery while out walking around. She would pick angles and framings that I wouldn't have thought of, and it's very humbling to witness her natural ability for it.

On the other hand, you have professional artists with decades of experience, yet still do works with bad composition and color sense (Jim Burns comes to mind).

So, maybe for some people, either you got it or you don't. Training/experience don't seem to be the only factor.

[Mikko K]

Maybe it has something to do with too much theory taking away from your intuition. I remember that Craig said the more he read about composition, the less he's able to compose well. Sounds very much like Wittgenstein's philosophy, that too much reading can make your thinking more complicated in a negative way.

[jinnseng]

I don't think you can put it into such simple terms as, it's all natural or it's all learned. What I do believe is that people are so diverse! We all have different capabilities and differents ways of interpreting the world. Maybe her ideas and tastes have been learned. Maybe she's learned by being exposed to your photography. It's so hard to say.

[MadSamoan]

I don't believe composition is a natural talent, but I do believe that people can be more prone to the psychological factors involved that make a composition successful due to their environment and life experience.

I've been studying composition over the last few months with the guidance of a prominent feature animation art director and had my mind blown away after reading a book by an MIT professor called 'A Primer In Visual Literacy'. It's heavily based off of Gestalt psychology principles. The book can be dry to read (kind of like trying to actually read Vanderpoel), but once you've read it, it opens your eyes and you'll never look at paintings, movies, photos, even abstract art in the same way ever again. And once you do, you'll recognize the painters, filmakers and illustrators who are familiar with these principles and who are not.

[broken pixel]

am i the only one who senses the irony of this whole thread?

[eyewoo]

irony???
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[LadyHydralisk]

Well training is not a black and white thing. There is good training, and there is bad training. One doesn't simply come out of art school with the ability to paint or draw, quite the opposite: most schools are so entrenched in modernism as to be completely obsolete to today's demand for a return to realism by the public.

Although there is some natural born talent, I do not think that anyone -and I have heard realist teachers say this- that a lack of natural talent means you cannot become as proficient as anyone else, it simply means you need the right training, and the ambition to sieze the day.

So, just because your friend might be Ansel Adams reborn, doesn't mean you can't catch up to them fair and square, and add your own life experience uniqueness to your mixture...something everyone has deep down.

[Max]

I dont really believe that's somthing you are are born with.
Talent is a progress imho! It doesn't matter if you make this progress consciously or not though.
Would a 1 year old be able to compose an amazing picture if it had the ability to draw lines? No, I don' think so.
Composition is one of MANY elements which you just have to learn in order to get control over it.

In any case, who defines what "good" composition is?
Thats something people define. If 51% say it's good, than it has to be good. Composition rules changes and so does the taste of the 51%

[Returner]

In my opinion talent is the foundation you start with, if you have the raw material you can go much farther than someone who doesn't.
If you spend alot of time doing something it's clear who has the most talent.
But if you paint a week or do something on just one occasion the one who are the most practical or "gets it" first might seem better, but not in the long run.
MadSamoan what kind of rules are you talking about? And how do you recognize them in modern films etc? Do you look after you own reaction and trace backwards to see what caused it? And it must be hellavu lot easier to recognize a good composition than to create one with those principles. So can that kind of principles really be usefull when u want to DO something? (I mean when u get above the absolute basic of composition)

[Impaler]

I don't think that it's so much that reading makes you dumber, but more that reading makes you realize how dumb you ARE. You start out with the rule of thirds, or maybe 5/8, but as you progress, you realize how many variables actually constitute a successful composition. Frame proportions, dominance of light and dark values, negative space, the perception of depth BETWEEN subjects, "focal length", diagonal vs. perpendicular recession. It's like a small pebble starting an avalanche.
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QED, sort of.

[matter]

i'm known to hav a 'good eye'... but i know i've imrpoved my composition remarkably working just with abstracted charcoal drawings...not worrying so much bout realism.. try a big dark area, some sharp tiny things.. blurry parts here... then step back, add some blurry parts there.. step back.. ok, go eat lunch and play basketball, come back a few hours later... wtf was i thinking.. i usually make improvements on composition after leaving/returning.

s'all bout letting ur eyes try to relax flow in/out of the 'canvas,' hopefully not just across it, to notice the problems...composition can tell a whole story about the figures/setting from beginning to end, each element to me has its own intro (point of origin), story (where it's goin), climax (where ur eye stops going towards it and towards somethin else), and 'denouement' (how it flows to the next element).

also interestin... many artists hav a generalized composition they lean towards. one friend of mine brings shapes always out of a corner,... i go towards yin/yang (strong diagonal in the center)....

-matt
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Sorry! for any digressive, pompous, or just plain off-topic rants.

[JRE]

[jo]

I think you need to seperate composition and layout from many of the other aspects of art. This because composition (especially with photography), unlike say brushwork, doesn't need technical knowledge to work.

Negative/Positive space and such aren't rules someone wrote down that everyone have to work after as much as they are things that have been found in images that work well, and then written down. ("People like this - do it") Therefor they aren't things that you have to read to be able to know by heart -

A person given a camera will most likely just go out and shoot whatever she/he likes to see as a picture, with a base in taste thats been brought up by movies, magazines, resort catalogues, comics and the likes. Which many times have atleast fairly good composition.

People will just take the camera and go out to take pictures that they like, and as long as there isn't any technical aspect to it that might hinder them (camera-wise), they are most likely to succeed.

[LadyHydralisk]

If you think technical knowledge is not needed to shoot a good photo you've never seen me with a camera. SUre it might look good to my eye, but then when it comes out it's all crappy light and colors.

Nawp, not buying it. it's the knowledge that makes the artist's vision come alive. That's why painting, drawing, photography are considered arts.

[jinnseng]

I think the point about the camera was that it's easier to take a good photo then to create a good painting. A good painting or drawing requires a fair amount of skill and visualization, while a camera is point and shoot. Even though having technical knowledge helps, anyone can just walk outside and start taking pictures.

[balistic]

[Drew]

[cheney]

I don't know if there is so much as a natural talent, but rather just a different methodology that allows for creation of good compositions. It seems, to me anyways, that thinking in terms of arrangement or geometry are the best methods for establishing a composition even if such thoughts are developed entirely outside of artistic confines. I am not explaining this so well, so I will have to elaborate my opinion.

There is a mode of functionality that is necessary for designing cars, buildings, and other functional applications. As a result design and composition first go to what is most necessary for functionality rather than what is most pleasing to the eye. There is a process of refinement where such basic designs are changed and developed to become more pleasing to the eye or otherwise artistic.

Paintings and other similar creative arts are often persued in a much different manner. We, as artists, think of what we want to create, and as a result we begin by visualizing an end process. This means that artists are typically applying a similar developemental process, but in a reverse order. We know what we want to create and set out steps to create it rather than creating something and learning to making into something we want as described in the previous paragraph.

I suppose the best way to attempt to analyze composition without loosing artist reference would be a two part process. The first step would be to proceed as normal and establish a subject to create such as the pretty painting we would visualize. Sketch this idea and include lots of information so that we don't loose the idea we have in mind. Now scrap it from the brain. The second step would be to start all over percieve the idea from a functional standpoint. Create a functional purpose and plan accordingly. Once you have gotten your concept where you want it now go back to the original sketch to apply the artistic relevence first visualized. A fresher and constructed composition should be there now.

This was written very quickly, so it might all be mush. This is my thoughts anyways.
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[Impaler]

Photographic composition is different from painterly composition if only for context.

Let's say two best friends, a painter and a photographer, decide to go for a hike. They come to a bend in a river, and the view is just perfect. The painter whips out his sketchpad, the photographer whips out his camera. The painter has already been furiously sketching for a few minutes when his friend snarls out a list of invectives. "What's wrong?" asks his painter friend. "Can't you see it? That goddamned Park Service sign is right in the middle of our composition. I can't get a good shot without it in there." The painter: "Oh, that. I just left that out. I thought about adding a happy old oak, too." The photographer cussed more and stomped off into the brush. He came back 30 minutes later, scratched, sweaty, but satisfied. "Well, I had to walk about 500 yards up the river, and I think I lost my lens cap.. The lighting wasn't so good either, but I finally got rid of that Park Service Sign." The painter looked thoughful for a second, then asked "Couldn't you have just used Photoshop to erase it or whatever?" The photographer looked surprised. "That would be cheating!"
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QED, sort of.

[J.Der]

Here's something interesting for y'all to try out:

Next time you're at your roung nephew's/niece's/cousins/sisters/brothers' house', look at their scribbles, whether crayon, pencil, loose leaf or construction paper.

I can guarantee about 99% of the time the composition will be balanced perfectly. This is exactly what Craig was saying when he said the more he read on the subject the less he was able to do it 'right'. When it comes to the most basic of concepts in art, the less thinking, the better, the more feeling the better.

You can learn about composition, and how to apply certain elements of what you've learnt into your pieces, but there is a huge deal that is solely dependant on your eye for things. That's not to say you should throw your art books out the window and never educate yourself further on such topics, but I think some people just dive too deep into the technical side of things, often when they lack confidence in their abilities.

[Francis]

I think there's definitely something to what you just said. I recently read a book called The Alphabet and The Goddess by Leonard Shlain. You all should check it out if you have the time.

There was a whole lot of stuff covered, but the relevant parts concerned the old left brain right brain interaction idea. In a very simplified nutshell, verbal and linear written skills originate (according to Shlain) in the left brain. The image-perception and all-at-once comprehension phenomena originate in the right brain. Given that, the act of writing a linear text treatise explaining the mechanic of how the brain perceives and/or creates "good" composition seems to be fundamentally at odds with the way the brain works, at least according to Shlain's thesis. (This also brings to mind some of the Zen Buddhist stuff about naming - i.e. in the act of naming a thing, part of that thing is lost.)

I think it can be learned from written material, but one has to absorb the concepts in such a way that you aren't thinking about "good" composition in verbal or written terms, but in a more gestalt, all-at-once/non-verbal way.

I swear this post makes sense in my head. Does it make sense to anyone else?
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[Capt. Fred]

My thought is yeah, do it more intuitively. jumble and shuffle and play with things until they feel right/good. Doing things intuitively can bring surprising accuracy. Like playing darts, you can hit a bullseye by 'feel', without calculating with the impulse and mass and force due to gravity. Knowing the rules consciously can give you a more reliable way of finding solutions, though perhaps less inspired and natural and more forced.

Someday you go on intuition someday you have to think and work a little harder, I personally think they're both important in doing your best.

Just cause intuition doesn't have an internal monologue for you to hear commentating on every thought process like conscious reasoning does, doesn't mean those thought processes aren't happening, and fast! And that intuitive bit can be honed just like any other talent, though admittedly it makes for slower learning than using formulas and templates to find results.

This is my view.

[Drew]

What you guys seem to be saying is what they say about art, sports, martial arts, and many other things: Learn everything you can, then forget it. After you know what to do, just let it come naturally.

As for whether composition or anything else comes naturally, what does it matter?

[watmough]

I am naturally talented with pants-less volleyball.