Many photographers and photography gurus came up with various theories and guides to composition in photography. Some even resort to mathematical solution as if good photography composition could be achieved just by religiously adhering to their formula. To me composition should not be restricted to any hard and fast rules that have to be followed all the time and neither can it be based on a set of fixed formula.
To shoot good pictures one doesn’t need mathematical acumen or technical prowess. Although in modern time nowadays it takes convoluted algorithmic calculations to produce a picture in a digital camera, it is taken care of by the digital camera. The composition job is still totally left to the photographer no matter how sophisticated the camera is (that’s the reason why we find some photographers with the highest-end camera take lousy pictures but that doesn’t warrant a blog space in our discussion here).
Photography is subjective just like any other form of art – one’s masterpiece could be just a crap to another. Even Henri Cartier-Bresson who is highly regarded as a master of street photographer and looked up to by photojournalists as the father of photojournalism was not spared with severe criticism by his host of critics and cynics. To his cynics Henri Cartier-Bresson’s shots are just mere snapshots. On another note, Steve McCurry of MAGNUM who shot the world famous portrait of an Afghan refugee girl with piercing eyes was once quoted as saying “Rules in photography are just baloney”.
However photography composition has various guidelines that photographers can choose to follow or break just to make the composition more pleasing. Guides are not necessarily to be followed all the time. In fact breaking it sometimes makes the picture look better. But in order to break the rules we have to know the rules first. Don’t we?
One of the composition guides that I found interesting is figure and ground flip. I first found out about this in a book entitled Designing A Photograph written by Bill Smith. Bill Smith is a commercial photographer who shoots mostly for giant corporate clients and for various ad agencies.
Figure and Ground Flip is not only about having foreground interest in your composition, but also about juxtaposing the foreground against the background in such an interesting manner which theoretically will hold viewers interest and make them look at the picture longer.
It suggests that if the foreground is interesting although the subject is normally in the background the viewers will first look at the foreground. When a viewer looks at the foreground, the foreground now becomes the Figure while the subject at the background is now the Ground. Subsequently the viewer’s eye will travel beyond the foreground and stop at the subject in the background. And now the background becomes the Figure while the foreground becomes the Ground.
So the theory is if a picture has interesting foreground with appealing subject in the background the viewers will keep shifting their views from foreground to background and move back to foreground again and may again move back to the background. Hence the term Figure/Ground Flip performed by the viewers. And this subconscious act will hold the viewers longer to look at and enjoy a picture.
Michael Fullack the founder of Apogee Photo who has more than 25 years of photography experience also wrote something interesting about Figure/Ground Flip in his interesting Gestalt Theory series.
Finally I am pleased to share with you some of my attempts at Figure/Ground Flip in my pictures below.
Click here to see a larger picture.
Click here to see a larger picture.
Click here to see a larger picture.
Comments and criticism are welcomed.
