Composition & Photography: Working with Photography Using Design Concepts

by Harold Davis

Own composition, use composition, and make composition your own in your photographs! Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photograph, composition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time the most elusive. What makes a composition “good”? It’s hard to define exactly, but we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable emotional response when a composition resonates with and complements the subject matter of an image. But traditional attempts to define “good composition” and to pass on rules for good compositional construction are often doomed to failure. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules. Rules eliminate experimentation and spontaneity, which are crucial for creating compelling, dynamic, and exciting compositions. The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected. “Expect the unexpected!” is perhaps the only viable “rule” of composition. To create exciting compositions, you must have a willingness to embrace serendipity and change as part of your artistic practice. After all, composition is a process, not a result. In Composition & Photography , photographer and bestselling author Harold Davis teaches you how to perceive patterns and abstractions and incorporate them into your image-making process. If one of the goals of photography is to show viewers things that are new, or things they haven’t seen before, or things they have seen many times but need to see anew, then it’s with the thoughtful and considered use of composition that you do that. In this book, you’ll learn how to reduce your subject matter to the fundamentals, and to show familiar subjects in unfamiliar, novel ways. Harold covers topics and themes such ▪ Lines and circles ▪ Rectangles ▪ Combinations ▪ Repetition ▪ Symmetry and asymmetry ▪ Abstraction ▪ Entering and exiting ▪ Vanishing points and perspective ▪ Emphasis ▪ Designing within a frame ▪ Creating order from chaos
Composition & Photography will help you find the tools and visual vocabulary to creatively design your photographs. Regardless of the genre and kind of photography you practice, you’ll learn to create powerful compositions that incorporate structure and form into your work in ways that best support your images. Along the way, Harold shows and discusses his own work relating to each compositional element or theme he’s exploring. And featured throughout the book are exercises about flexibility and process, designed to spur your creativity and help you begin an internal creative discussion. “My goal as a photography teacher and writer about photography is to inspire and to help you become the best and most creative photographer and image-maker that you can be.”
―Harold Davis “Harold Davis is a force of nature―a man of astonishing eclectic skills and accomplishments.”
―Rangefinder Magazine

Genres: Photography

240 pages, Paperback

Published July 5, 2022

About the author

Harold Davis is widely recognized as a leading contemporary photographer and artist. He is also the author of more than 30 books, including Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography from Amphoto/Random House and Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis which is published by Focal Press, and has been called "one of the most beautiful books ever created."

Harold Davis believes that advances in the technology and craft of digital photography have created an entirely new art form. Trained as a classical photographer and painter, his photographic images are made using special HDR (High Dynamic Range) capture techniques that extend the range of visual information beyond what the eye can normally see.

Davis creates and processes his images using wide-gamut and alternative digital methods that he has invented. His techniques combine the craft of photography with the skills of a painter.

Photographic adventures and assignments have taken him across the Brooks Range, the northernmost mountains in Alaska. He has photographed the World Trade Towers, hanging out of a small plane, followed in the footsteps of Seneca Ray Stoddard, a 19th-century photographer of the Adirondacks, and created human interest photo stories about the residents of Love Canal, an environmental disaster area.

Harold is well-known for his night photography and experimental ultra-long exposure techniques, use of vibrant, saturated colors in landscape compositions, and beautiful creative floral imagery.

He makes his over-sized original prints on unusual substrates such as pearlized metallic and washi rice papers. Davis states, "I believe that nothing like my prints has ever been seen before. They simply could not have been created until recently. I've been able to innovate in a domain where many techniques and crafts have come together for the first time. My prints are made meticulously, and have a 200-year archival rating for ink and paper if they are handled properly.