With all the numbers associated with photography (f stops, shutter speeds, focal length, ISO, etc.), one group that's often overlooked is the number of subjects in an image.
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There are lots of numbers that come into play with photography. Shutter speeds, f stops, focal lengths of lenses, digital sensor multiplying factors, and fill flash ratios are some of the more obvious ones. One number that doesn’t often pop into photographers’ minds is the number of subjects in a photo. The importance behind this deals with composition. There’s a compositional fact that states - when including an even number of similar subjects, it is more difficult to create a successful composition than when an odd number of subjects appear. The obvious even number that comes to mind is two. Unless it’s people, when two subjects are the primary elements in a photo, they tend to compete for attention. When the number of subjects is odd, the eye flows from one to the next rather than back and forth. This guideline dates back to the early painters and still stands today. Not that it’s written in stone, but more often than not, it works.
Using the example of two subjects, when one is on the left side of the frame and the other on the right, the eye bounces from one to the other and psychologically creates tension as to which one is the primary subject. The same holds true for subjects that are at the top and bottom of the frame. The exception is when you photograph two people in that it’s natural to photograph couples, parent and child, a bride and groom, etc. With an odd number of subjects, there’s a rhythm or pattern created by the subjects and the eye flows from one to the next and often winds up returning to the initial one that caught the viewer’s eye. Getting down to basics, the simple odd number of subjects to photograph is one. Three creates a nice repetition. Five subjects create a pattern as do seven and nine. Once you get past ten main elements, the importance of the number declines.
The three images that illustrate this article all have an odd number of subjects and the subject matter is birds. (I purposely didn’t include examples with people.) In your mind, in the first photo of a single snow goose, imagine if there was another similar subject in the frame. Your eye would go from one to the other leaving you wondering which is the main subject. An exception would be if the second bird was rather small in the frame making the purpose of the image a size comparison. In the image of the three pelicans in flight, each one has interest and sort of tells a story of the papa, mama and child relative to their sizes. In the silhouette of the cranes at sunset, the fact that five appear allows the viewer to create a pattern with the birds. If there were mergers between any of them wherein the wings of one touched the body of another, the image would fall short.
To learn more about this topic, join me on one of my Photographic Nature Tours. Visit www.russburdenphotography.com and click on the NATURE TOURS button for more information. Also, pick up a copy of my new book, Amphoto’s Complete Book of Photography. You can purchase a signed copy directly from me or visit your local book store or Amazon. Contact me at rburden@ecentral.com to order your signed copy.
