I am watching the composition class Visual Flow and wonder if this works as a good layered composition? I was at the beach photographing sunrise (see Sunrise, Pepper Beach). It was not a great sunrise but these 3 people came along to also photograph sunrise, and they were interesting to me mainly because of the intensity of the 2 women vs the guy who looks like he's thinking he should have stayed in bed. However, it appears to me that there are 3 layers: the sand, the people, and the dune grasses. There is also a line in that they are all facing and looking in the same direction. I would not rate it as a compelling photo, rather more like street photography. However, does it illustrate any of the principles you discuss in Visual Flow?
Hi Fran, yes, it illustrates quite well a few of the concepts in Visual Flow. You correctly identify the three layers or four in the image (sand, people, grass, sky). And the three of them create a nice 1-2-3 pattern that gets the eye moving. Ideally, if you could have moved a bit to the left and angled your camera right as you did so, keeping the same framing on the people, you might have been able to eliminate the building in the upper left, which is a bit distracting and tends to pull the eye to that corner of the image frame. Or, you might have been able to include more of the building, making it the fourth object in the pattern. I think you had a lot of opportunities to experiment with different compositions for this scene. The three of them do make an interesting pattern subject!