- [Instructor] Let's continue our conversation
about composition, and here let's talk about
this whole idea of how we can fit
the subject within the frame.
Now fit is a really interesting topic.
Have you ever tried on a shirt or a jacket
and it just sort of felt awkward
and it wasn't quite right for you?
Well that fit might be something
which is good for someone else.
So fit is a very subjective matter,
but what we're trying to do is
to get that sense that the subject belongs.
Like when you put on that one jacket
or that shirt and you're like yeah, this is it.
So how do we do that when
we're creating portraits?
I think one of the ways that we do that
is we really start to think about use of space.
Now this may mean that we have
the subject in the center of the frame,
like with the photograph here,
where the guy is holding the canoe,
but he fits right in this perfect spot.
Or my other friend, who is an artist,
and he's in this old barn.
He fits within the spot, and there's
space around the subject.
And as we look at these examples
and I go though them, you can see
this can happen in the natural world
or just in straightforward portraits
or working with someone, photographing them
on the street, and with these images,
hopefully what you're starting to see
is that they're composed in a way
that the subject has a little bit
of breathing room.
They're not sort of stuck in one corner,
but it's almost like the way they blend
into the scene is in a way that they belong there.
And that's often what we want to think about
when we're creating more of these
environmental type of portraits.
We want to give them enough space
so that they have some breathing room,
but also compose it in a way that
it feels really natural and uncontrived.
Sometimes this means getting up
close and filling the frame,
a little iPhone photo of my kids at the beach.
Or other times it may mean pulling back
and finding just the right spot
for the person in the overall frame.
So with these things, I want to talk about
a few examples to kind of illustrate this point,
and I want to start off one with
a photograph of my daughter.
In this particular picture, the fit
isn't right, and the problem with the fit here
is that I'm using my iPhone,
it's a wider-angle lens,
about 33 mm approximately,
and I'm just too high.
What that does to a person is it sort of
squashes her down, and so what I did is
I waited for a wave to clean out the sand,
and then next took a frame like this.
Look at the horizon line.
And if you look at the horizon line
you'll see it's right about her neck,
and here it's a little bit lower.
So she's more prominent, she really fits.
She takes center stage.
She's on the stage in this shot, right?
That one, she is just sort of squished down.
So fit isn't just about elbow room,
but it's also about how we're using our camera
and our camera height as well.
Here we have a photograph which is
a picture of a mom and a daughter,
a portrait, family portrait,
and in this one I'm going to re-compose the shot.
Now look at the first re-composition here.
If I were to have composed this way
and gotten closer, and cropped off her hands
and her feet, it creates a sense of desinence.
What I mean by that is your eye goes to
that edge of the frame and says wait,
what happened there?
And when you're composing a frame with someone,
if you ever compose where you're cropping off
at the joints, it doesn't look as good.
Here might be a little bit better.
If we were to re-compose this shot in this way,
all of a sudden her arm's missing,
and they're kind of leaning and tilted
off to the side, so the fit
is almost a little bit awkward in that way.
But then when we open it all up, it feels right.
It feels good.
It feels like we were there.
Here's another example.
This is my wife and daughter
after a ballet recital.
I think it's a really bad shot.
It's tilted, it's awkward.
They're kind of spilling out of the frame.
It doesn't make sense.
So I just had to rearrange myself
and make it so they fit and fill the frame.
Let me show you a couple more examples of this.
Kids out at Joshua Tree.
There's kind of blending into the rocks.
It's not a portrait, it's just a picture.
To turn it into a portrait,
I need to figure out well how does my daughter
actually fit into the rocks.
Or maybe explore that even further
and try out a couple of different ideas.
One more example, this time
on the Brooklyn Bridge.
I'm trying to figure out how to get
this guy Jared here to fit within the scene.
Here he doesn't fit because there's
someone behind him, there's lots of
stuff going on.
I try a couple of other ideas,
but again he is just sort of awkwardly
placed inside this scene.
But then, once you see the fit,
you kind of know it, right?
It's like all of the lines are
in the right spot.
In this shot over here, he is right there,
framed inside of that arch.
And so composing in this way takes
a little bit of an intuitive approach.
So here's the take-away.
If you want to compose better frames,
you need to develop a sense of spacial awareness.
And what I mean by that is this.
You want to hold up your camera,
look through it and focus in
on the subject, right?
But then you also want to literally
look around the entire frame.
And the more that you can do that,
the better fit, and the better compositions
you can create.