This is a photograph of my youngest son Clay, snapped this summer, just as he finished the last of a cup of lemonade. The limited depth-of-field, tonal range and color palette all contribute the visual economy of this particular composition.
I've been browsing and sorting through a lot of my photos lately. One of the things I've noticed as a result of doing this is that I favor simple, elegant, minimalist compositions. I like to direct the viewer's attention to what I think are the most import elements and visually minimize or crop out everything else.
Here's another example. If I were to get anal about minimalism I could use Photoshop to clone out the clouds at the upper right and apply a layer to turn the area in shadow completely black. But as I said, this is just an example. No need to go overboard. Whoever painted this old Mercury already took care of that.
And now for something completely different. There's a lot more going on here. In fact, a few seconds after I shot this photo another photographer and two dozen more people entered the foreground area at the left. The boy and girl at the right kept holding hands.
Not all of my photographs look this way, of course. I occasionally take the opposite approach: I shoot a scene where there's a lot going on and invite you to take it all in at your leisure. Of the two approaches, I find the latter the hardest to pull off successfully. When there's a lot going on at once you can't afford to concentrate on any particular thing; you simply have to sense when the moment is right, release the shutter, and hope for the best. There's not a lot of time to do it, either. Your window of opportunity might literally be the interval between when your shutter opens and closes.
That's how it works for me, anyway. If this is your normal way of composing then you may find the minimalist approach more challenging. If your compositions usually fall somewhere in-between, neither here nor there, that's okay too--however, you might want to try one extreme or the other from time to time. It's a good visual exercise. You might also find it reassuring to know that you can alter your style, even if you choose not to.
If you decide to give it a try, here's a technical tip: It's generally easier to go the minimalist route when you're shooting with a medium-to-long focal length lens. Wide-angle lenses take in a lot more and therefore lend themselves to images that feature panoramic activity. That said, there are always exceptions--and the exceptions only add to the fun and challenge.
Ah, you hit on something I've been pondering as well. I long to produce more and/or better minimalist work - simple Zen-style stuff, ideally - but I rarely see the opportunities. Need to work on the psychology of perception a bit more - the ability to identify elements separately from the gloss of texture or specific colour.
However, one idea for those with wider field of view: invoke the fourth dimension and go long-exposure about it. I find that's a great way to simplify a composition - for example, water lapping around rocks on the shore, if you expose for long enough it ceases to be about the water but instead becomes an interaction of shapes - kinda like wondering how the sky fits the ground so cleanly at the horizon, only more-so. :)
Posted by: Tim | January 03, 2012 at 07:46 PM
"If you decide to give it a try, here's a technical tip: It's generally easier to go the minimalist route when you're shooting with a medium-to-long focal length lens. Wide-angle lenses take in a lot more and therefore lend themselves to images that feature panoramic activity."
This is exactly why I have always liked short telelphotos, since I like minimalist compositions. A 90 mm-e (or so) lens lets me take in enough to be interesting while allowing for trimming of extraneous elements.
On the other hand, I also like my wide zoom, as much as anything for the challenge it provides in composing something relatively minimal. I have, on occasion, forced myself to leave it set to 18 mm-e and not touch the zoom ring. It's an interesting exercise, and something good occasionally comes of it.
Posted by: Nicholas Condon | January 03, 2012 at 08:01 PM
A interesting lesson!
Thank you.
Posted by: Fred | January 03, 2012 at 09:21 PM
The last photo is the best. It's like a short story in a single photo. We all can make our own back story to the photo and have fun doing it.
Posted by: John Krill | January 03, 2012 at 09:34 PM
That 1949-50 Mercury is sick. The man that painted that car ought to be shot.
Posted by: Tom Swoboda | January 04, 2012 at 02:55 AM