A Sequence of Composition

This exercise was designed to understand how a shot develops by taking a sequence of shots from different positions whilst looking only through the viewfinder, deliberately taking the initial shots without composing as you normally would.

The shots were taken walking around Dubai Marina.  In October, the temperatures start to fall from the searing heat of the summer and it becomes possible to go outside and enjoy an outdoors Dubai.  I decided to conduct the exercise here and had no real idea as to what I was going to take, I just thought I would let the scene evolve.

Many of the buildings along the marina are quite iconic and whilst I was walking along, I noticed that there were a lot of people stopping to take photographs of themselves in front of the buildings.  I realised that capturing the people enjoying taking the photographs would be a new angle on photographing the marina.

 

In line with the brief, the first shot was not particularly composed and the result is that the people are not really the focus of the shot and the buildings are cut off at the top.

Still thinking of the buildings, I changed the orientation of the short to portrait to get the whole building in.  I realised though that although the building was now fully in shot, the picture still did not really show the people, and they were my goal.

I turned my attention away from the buildings and went a lot closer to the people.   It is now very clear that the subject is the people, and you cannot really see the buildings at all. 

Whilst this was better, I now felt that I had lost the original idea which was to show that the people were enjoying having their photograph taken in front of the buildings.   I moved around to a different side and at that point the people stopped to review what they had so far, this took out the very bright background so it is a more balanced picture but still does not show them engaging with the scene.

I moved back to where I had started and waited from them to take more photographs.  When they did, I got very close and luckily for me, they started taking pictures with the tourist trick of playing with perspective to hold buildings in hands.  I was able to capture my final shot which has the subject posed in this way and by moving slightly, I was able to get the photograph being taken by the phone into the shot by getting the phone’s screen visible.  With this I felt that I had captured the people wanting to interact with the scene behind them.