I was fortunate enough to visit Abu Dhabi on a recent business trip and had some time to spare. I visited the grand Mosque and took many images but I wanted to blog some reflections on this one.
Firstly, since carrying out the depth of field exercise in the earlier parts of the course I have been experimenting with focusing on different areas of the image for varying compositional effect. With this image I wanted two elements in the composition - the stained glass and the building in the distance. I tried focusing on each and this one gave the best effect. The building in the background is still very much part of the composition. I had a sequence of these shots with and without people but I think the two guys walking past add to the composition. I've also been noticing in many recent TV shows that the focus moves around depending on the character (or element) that is important at that time (been oblivious to this before TAOP and useful for the video mode of my D90!), so focus and sharpness are major components of composition.
Secondly I have been reading a lot of the work of one of my favorite present day photographers, David Duchemin in his ebook "Drawing the eye" he talks about visual mass and how he composes his images by thinking about which elements he wants the viewer to look at in which order and then uses "visual mass" to guide the viewer through. He says he doesn't do this totally consciously. I realized with this image I could analyse it in these terms - the main element is the stained glass, which is sharp and large in the frame so carries most visual weight. The second element is the people walking past (human interest carries visual mass) and the third is the mosque building in the background.
Of course, I didn't consciously think this through at the time. I just remember being aware that I wanted both the glass and the mosque building to be part of the composition and that people walking by seemed to give it more interest. It's pleasing that background reading and learning shows itself when shooting.
