Instruction manual

3. Composition

Airborne Photographers have to know basic composition in order to understand the

framing requirements of aerial photo or video imaging. Composition concerns how

you arrange a subject in a picture and how you translate what your eyes see into a

digital image.

The key to composition is remembering that a digital camera doesn’t “see” the same

way that you do. How often have you taken a photo from an airplane, only to discover

later that the photo doesn’t look anything like what you remember seeing? This is the

first rule of photography – reality, as seen by your camera, is quite different from what

you see with your eyes. If you frame all your photos without taking this into account,

you will always get disappointing results.

One big difference between what you see and what the camera sees is that a camera

doesn’t have a brain. Your brain interprets, supplements, and/or enhances the image

it receives from your eyes. Also, a camera has a much more limited range of focus,

exposure, and composition than you do. Your eyes, in conjunction with your brain,

create scenes that are impossible to reproduce in a camera.

Also, remember that your eyes are more sensitive to contrast than to color. Since

low-angle sunlight gives more contrast than when the sun is high in the sky, photos

taken in the early morning or late afternoon look more textured and detailed due to the

longer shadows. However, large shadows can hide what we are looking for, so you

must strike a balance between getting photos with great contrast and missing

potential targets in the shadows.

When you look at something, your field of vision is a rectangle with rounded corners

(almost a wide ellipse). We see the world panoramically. Most of the time, the

camera doesn’t “see” a scene in this way. So it is your job to take the panorama and

translate it into an image that is suited to the mission. You can do this by using

guidelines for composition.

OBJECTIVES:

1. Discuss how to compose a picture, including:

a. Focal point and the “rule of thirds.”

b. Filling the frame, including the three rules for framing.

Demonstrate image composition, particularly proper framing.

[AP-O-001]

Chapter