Warm-up: In your own words define composition.

Why is composition
important in taking photographs?

Walter Rosenblum. Pitt Street. 1938. Silver Gelatin Print

composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a
work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the
organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art.

How are visual elements used in these

images to create composition? Which
image do you consider a “photograph”
versus a “snapshot”?
 A photograph must be “composed”

Henri Cartier-
Bresson

Taking a photograph requires careful observation to every

detail within the viewfinder/frame, an artistic interpretation
of an event or person or object.
Rule of Thirds.
Leading Lines

Alfred Steiglitz

Alfred Eisenstaedt
William Rau. New Main Line at Duncannon. 1906. Silver
Gelatin Print
Symmetry and
Patterns:

A. Collard. Roundhouse on the Bourbonnais

Railway, Nevers. 1860
Russell Lee. Second Hand Tires, San Marcos, Texas. 1940. Silver
Gelatin Print
View Point

Sid Grossman. Dorothea Lange

Low View point High View Point

Light
Fill the Frame/Cropping

Sid Grossman. Coney

Island. 1947. Gelatin
Silver Print
Frame within a Frame

Lewis W. Hine.
Powerhouse Mechanic,
1925. gelatin Silver Print
 Using the Edges of the Frame

Roman Vishniac. Entrance to the

Ghetto., Cracow. 1937. Gelatin
Silver Print