Follow the Sun

Chapter 8Composition—Building a Photograph

“The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it.”

John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye (Museum of Modern Art, 1996)

The photographer’s job is to translate the rich, limitless world of first-hand experience into the finite, two-dimensional rectangle of a photograph. We build our images by deciding what goes into the rectangle, how the elements are arranged inside it, and what we leave out. This is the act of composition. You can achieve technical perfection and still fail as a photographer if you do not have a good sense of composition. It is the art of photography; ...