Composition 3: Symmetry, Asymmetry, Balance

Symmetry: One way to imagine symmetry is if what you are looking at can fold over onto itself, and be identical. Of course, in photography, perfect symmetry won't always be captured, but there are things in our everyday lives that are close to exact symmetry, and that is what I captured for this category this week.  My goal here was to get as close to real symmetry as possible. In one of the photos, the first one here, I used the mirror effect to create a cool image that showed me a new way of creating symmetry through photographs. A lot of these symmetrical photos were objects that appear in everyday life, and I wanted to show much symmetry there is around us.  

Asymmetry: Asymmetry is pretty self-explanatory, it's not symmetrical. For my asymmetrical photos I found using two objects of different shape or size to work the best. I went around the neighborhood looking for objects that were close to each other, and not the same. Instead of flipping the image onto itself and having it match up, like symmetry, asymmetrical photos don't match when they are flipped onto themselves. My goal here was to have the asymmetry be clear, and make sure the viewer knew that I was intentionally capturing two separate objects that do not match. 

Balance: Balance is the concept of objects in an image that carry the same weight. They don't have to be the same thing necessarily, but they do need to carry equal weight within the picture. My goal for this category was to switch things up a little bit for me. Usually in these categories I stick to theme and there are commonalities between each of the 5 photos, like my symmetrical category. Instead, I wanted to create more diverse set of pictures. So, I took pictures that were balanced with anywhere from 3 objects to upwards of 20. That was my goal in this group of pictures, not only to capture balance itself, meaning each subject is seemingly equal in the photo, weight, but to also have a variety of pictures that fall into the balance category.

Symmetry:

Asymmetry:

Balance:

Pictorial Lines: Arrangement, Decorative, and Lines Leading to Subject

Arrangement: In photography, the arrangement composition for pictorial lines is the capturing of lines in a photo and having no subject or focal point after you take the lines away. Taking the lines away is done mentally, but if you can image the lines gone, and you see something blank or nothing being captured, then that is a picture under the category of arrangement. My goal for this composition was to take photographs of things that had many lines, but a sort of blank wall or surface after removing them, because that was what the arrangement composition meant to me.

Decorative: The second composition under pictorial lines that we used was decorative. The decorative composition is the idea that when removing the lines upon imagination, there is still a photo that has a subject, focal points, and things going on, as opposed to a blank wall.  My goal for taking pictures in the decorative category was to have a clear subject that had lines, and then also having something either going on behind it in the background, or having shapes and outlines remain. 

Lines leading to subject: The final composition under pictorial lines we used was lines leading to subject. Lines leading to subject is a composition in which there are lines leading the viewer's eye to a subject. Similar to the leading lines composition we did earlier in this class, the only different being the lines are leading to a subject as opposed to the background or foreground. I went for a bit of a mix between the pictures here because in some of them the subject that the lines are leading to is obvious, and the other ones not so much. My goal here was to make sure the viewer would be able tell that this is the lines leading to subject composition, but see different ways of capturing the composition.

Decorative:

Lines Leading to Subject:

Depth

Repetition: Repetition is a concept used in photography where an image contains something that repeats itself over an over again. For this composition, I tried to capture things that caught my eye in terms of repetition. The goal here was to make sure that depth was created, and the way I did that was by capturing things in an image that go from the foreground out to the background, leading your eye. In my photographs, the objects that were in the foreground of the picture were intentionally larger than the ones in the background, creating depth.

Leading Lines: Leading Lines, as a concept in photography, leads the viewers eye to the background from the foreground. The goal here was to capture lines in an image that create depth by leading the viewers eye back and forth between the foreground and background. I tried to take photographs of multiple lines that clearly led my eye away to the background and created depth.

Depth Staging: Depth staging is a concept used in photography where there are usually two main subjects, one in the foreground and one in the background. The goal here was to create depth by having two subjects split into the foreground and background. There needs to be enough space in between the subjects to really show depth, instead of something looking flat, or 2D.