cgardner Offline Upload & Sell: Off
|
The challenge in trying to tell a complete story in a single still photo is preventing the context explaining the action in the focal point from becoming a distraction from it. That's the problem in your shot...
Here's the focal point in your photo...

How to include the context without the photo becoming a ping-pong match for the eye? Tell the story with more than one photo. Start with a shot from the back of the room showing the space and people in it looking at the action on the stage...


The wide shot establishes the context of the location and what is occurring there. That allows you to crop closer and not need to try to cram context about the location into every shot that follows,
In your "medium" shots where main focal point and context are balanced 50/50 in terms of how many pixels they occupy, look for opportunities to put interesting elements in the foreground in front of and framing the action in the background as in the examples below. Putting the foreground focal point directly in front of the background action unifies the elements front > back preventing the left>right ping-pong dynamic..


There are times when the ping<>pong dynamic can work in a photo, but the sensation created by that whipsaw movement of eye across the photo is one of tension, not harmony. You get a more harmonious vibe when the two element appear close to each other. For example, as this crude cut and paste illustrates when shooting if you had changed your shooting position to the right more you could have put the organ player and black board behind the singer, stacking them front>back rather than lining them up horizontally like ducks in a row.

In optical parlance it is called "parallax". In composition parlance it is called "unifying centers of interest" so they appear together in harmony in the photo instead of in opposition.
|