Exercise–Object in different positions in the frame.

The object behind this exercise is to look at how an object is positioned in the frame and what difference it makes to the composition. For this exercise I took several shots of two buoys sitting in the water and mostly avoided the surrounding boats  as this changed the balance without moving the main object. It was not possible to avoid all the reflections of the riggings without either moving position markedly or zooming in, and I was concentrating hard on the position of the buoys and was not as aware of the pictorial weight of the surrounding reflections as might have been ideal for this exercise as they undoubtedly  altered the balance of the photos.

                                                                                      1) central

                                                                                2)  left positioning

                                                                             3)  slightly left of central

                                                                        4) left and down to lower quarter

                                                                    5) right and down to lower quarter

                                                                         6)  up and central positioning

                                                                           7) lower central position

Of the available options here I find that the pictures where the buoys are placed to the left of central are more satisfying. No.1 is generally uninteresting, it would have be improved by a close crop to really focus on the colours and textures in the buoys themselves.  7 is an improvement – but still feels unbalanced,  No 6 feels very unbalanced as I am constantly looking for the point of the photo. Overall I prefer  the second option where the brightly coloured buoys are balanced by the reflection, or the forth where the buoy in the corner leads your eye into the frame.

In this very simple composition it is easy to move the main point of focus around in the picture and this clearly makes a substantial difference to the success of the picture. The central position is useful to look at detail but does not encourage the eye to look around the frame while this is better emphasised by an off central placement. Here the reflection acted as an (unintentional) counterbalance in many of the pictures.