The edge

Where I heard it recently I can't remember, I think it was in a long and tedious Youtube video that actually sent me to sleep at one point, that the edge of the frame is a photographer's greatest compositional tool and that painters don't pay much attention to it. That last point is cobblers - indeed I'd say that it's photographers who don't pay as much attention to it as they should.

Certainly the frame is what photographers use to select what they include and exclude. That's the problem. It's used simplisticly. It is far more interesting, and can give pictures an edginess (intentional pun) if the frame is used to both include and exclude something. This (sometimes) accidental feature of photographs was picked up on by painters in photography's early years -  notably by Dégas.

The temptation when framing a shot of an object is to include it all. Which is illustrationally fair enough. But by chopping bits of it off more of an impression of what it is like might be made. That was what I was trying to do in the picture above. It's not so much a picture of a bicycle as a picture about bicycles. A contrast of straight and curved lines and a limited palette of red, white and blue.

With pictures of people the temptation to 'get everything in' is even stronger. Again the temptation can be resisted. Even in more formal portraiture it can be made to work.

The thing is that when the frame edge is used in this way, and it works, it should go unnoticed at first glance. In just the same way that a wonky horizon doesn't upset the viewer when the picture works. Two aspects of composition which I need to do more of so that they become intuitive. Bloody difficult though it is.

Both the above pictures were made using a lens I have had little use for and stuck on a camera to play with before selling it on. Funny how when you stick a lens on and have no other choice you can still manage. I think I've managed to train my eye to its focal length now. I might hang on to the lens a bit longer.

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