All about Composition and your Camera.

All about Composition and your Camera

COMPOSITION

Limitations

Photography seems a very limited art of expression after all, and those serious gentlemen of an older generation who told us so many a time appear to have been right.
But all the "legitimate" arts, too, have their limitations. Sculpture is colourless, painting two-dimensional and music invisible. Does it matter?
Neither do the limitations of the camera, as long as you recognize them, instead of trying, with innocent enthusiasm, to trespass on the painter's field of work. Do not attempt to "compose" your image as the artist does. Do not let yourself be confused by learned theorists, who would willingly lecture you on the art of photography, using all the imposing terms they can get hold of among bearded connoisseurs of painting, sculpture, architecture or even music.
You will probably find that most of these people have never produced a single decent snapshot of their own, and if you try to take photographs according to their ideas you will hardly get any either. The sun will set, the grass turn yellow, your subjects get dead tired while you are still meditating about some subtle point of aesthetics which your camera cannot cope with anyway.
Compose yourself, dear reader ; you cannot "compose" at all. Not in the arty, nineteenth century sense of the word.
("Is this about composition or is it not? Is the title a lie?" I am afraid it is Slightly.)