Secrets Of Photographic Composition

I tell my students to ALWAYS look hard enough for these structures and relations that make the best photos to work. Suddenly you start to see these things all over!

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Helmut Newton's Self-portrait displays beautiful relationship with hexagon/ cube and 30-60-90 triangles.

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Richard Avedon's classic image Dovima with the Elephants embeds golden triangle. With some experience photographing animals I can understand why the left side elephant's eye did not land exactly in to the spiral's center.

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Here we have Richard Avedon's Carmen supported in mid air leap by The Enegram, an ancient and sacred, geometric symbol.

The Enegram is a comco of of an Isosceles Triangles with additional interlocking lines. It also carries antithesis of Nexus Key: skin of the Abha Torus.

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The Mainbocher Corset by Horst P Horst displays an exceptional relations as the subject is enclosed inside the Triangle of Ancient Geometry.

Shoulder line. Right hip. Elbow meeting the extended circle. Arm rised to the level of diagonal.

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See how Mundil Mahil's photo of Muhammad Ali Knocks out Sunny Liston is built on penagram and arches from golden spiral.

Muhammad Ali Stands inside the top trianle of pentagram and Sunny Liston lies beaten at the feet of the pentagram. Top rope extends along the vertical line of pentagram and Mohammad's posture keeps him inside the pentagon and focus of the character is inside the topmost circle.

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I have to admit that not everything matches between Flag Raising at Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal and Nazca lines, but there are still striking similarities with the dynamics. In this photo the valley aligns with the hill as the major intersection of long straight lines radiates from the flag and seems to support it.

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Annie Leibovitz's photo of Mikhail Baryshnikov aligns with layout of the great pyramids of Giza (You naturally know that they are not aligned in a straight line but curve that plays on a fibonazzi sequence?)

Left wrist, spine and left ankle align with the center of the pyramids while other important lines hit pretty damn close ot other meaningful joints!

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Moon Over Half Dome embeds well the typical Ancient Egyptian doorway layout, which is incorporated both sacred ratios (p and f) in its harmonic design.

Was Ansel Adams familiar with egyptian architecture and it's harmonic proportions?

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It is a well known fact that the current pepsi logo has received some special geometrical and proportional attention. The two yellowish circles are in a golden propotion with each other.

That is why—not suprisingly—the Pepsi logo overlaid on Jacob Aue's photo plays very well. We see how the dinghy aligns with the smaller circle's edge. The upper blue diagonal separates the two characters (this is also the theme of the photo: together but still separated). Knees of the character sitting in the boat hit the center of the circle and her direction of view is towards the edge of the circle at the intersection of orange diagonal.

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Robert Capa has many hidden compositional secrets hidden in his photographs. How was he able to pull these off in a heat of a battle is beyond me. With this photo Young girl at refugee transit center, Barcelona, 1939 he was likely to use Leica range finder camera.

The character curls up in to a golden spiral and another spiral encapsulates her belongings.

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Vesica Piscis overlay over View of Valley from Mountain by Ansell Adams. Seemingly asymmetrical composition has many symmetric elements to it. Looks like Mr. Adams placed the rock in middle purposefully to this exact spot where circles and triangles intersecting would create the space and boundaries to the composition.

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Jeffrey Pine by Ansel Adams gathers it's subject in to a circled triangle that is intersected by golden sections. See how the ground—needle relationship obeys the sections and how the subject is encapsulated to the circle.

I belive this kind of work can be done only with a range finder or large format camera. Hopefully Sony and others will be adding option for custom gid overlays to the next gen EVF. That will be the only way to build esthetically pleasurable photos to us regular photographers!

On any circle (centre O), construct the 6 equally spaced points A, B, C, D, E and F on its circumference without altering your compasses, so they are the same distance apart as the radius of the circle. ABCDEF forms a regular hexagon.

Choose every other point to make an equilateral triangle ACE.

On two of the sides of that triangle (AE and AC), mark their mid-points P and Q by joining the centre O to two of the unused points of the hexagon (F and B).

The line PQ is then extended to meet the circle at point R. Q is the golden section point of the line PR.

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The canyon and the mountain tops in Francesco Riccardo Iacomino's Ansel Adams Tribute have a peculiar relationship with triangular Fibonacci spiral.

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Sally Mann's Cigarette Candy obeys lines and intersections of sacred geometry. Note how main character's eye and line of hair matches the intersection. And check how the same circle leads and intersects and her shoulder and wrist. Hand holding cigarette lays on line of descending diagonal that also runs trough secondary characters.

The most interesting thing is what is missing. Four powerful intersections lay in dark background creating a powerful negative space.

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Winner of Ansell Adams BW 3 – Photography Contest Lonely Vigil by Barbara Watson illustrates how the basics of sacred geometry are also building blocks of a winning photograph.

The two principal elements of sacred geometry, circle and square, in the act of self-division give rise to the three sacred roots. The roots are considered as generative powers, or dynamic principles through which forms appear and change into other forms.

— Lawlor

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Henri Cartier-Bresson shot this image Ivory Coast and had the tiled lines of the boat and the lumber to domiate it. To make the photo intresting he arranged workers heads in two-three parallel diagonals to break those lines.

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Henri Cartier-Bresson's Bruxelles 1932 is geniously divided by a horizontal line that starts from 1/2 of the frame and cuts main character's head off at exactly φ!

The shadow of first gentleman is replicated by shapes of the onlooker's dark coats.