What I noticed was that many of the principles of composition I have learnt about or naturally discovered during my years as an amateur were already being put into practice by painters even many hundreds of years ago. Artists of bygone eras then have directly influenced or even 'instructed' not only painters and drawers of today, but also photographers.
Johann Christian Dahl's A Mother and Child by the Sea (1840) shows the 'rule of thirds' in action. Although this 'rule' is often broken to great effect, it is useful for giving prominence in a landscape image to either the ground or the sky. In this oil on canvas, Dahl gives greater focus to the stormy-looking sky. He also places the partially-obscured moon in the centre, and the mother and child balance the ship left to right. To me as a viewer, the three objects (people, moon and ship) create a visual triangle, and it is this geometry that leads my eye around the whole scene. As well as appearing balanced geometrically, the dark clouds at the top of the frame balance the dark foreground at the bottom of the frame.
In Richard Wilson's The River Dee Near Eaton Hall (1760), the painter uses two prominent techniques that I have used in my own photographs. The first is the perspective of the river Dee, which flows vertically from the bottom of the frame towards the middle, giving the 2D image a sense of depth, and acting as a leading line to guide the viewers eye into the image. The second is the use of the tree on the right hand side, which 'frames' the image. I am a big fan of using natural frames in my photographs, and I do use trees or other foliage a lot, but other things can be used as well, including man-made structures such as doorways.
Composition aside, several artworks gave me thematic ideas, elements I may want to use in my own future work:
Matthias Stom's Isaac Blessing Jacob (1635) portrays an interesting concept; at first it appears as if you, the viewer, are completely detached from the scene you are looking at, as the men on the right and left are engaging with each other. You then notice the lady in the middle of the frame is actually looking directly at the viewer, and is holding up her finger to instruct silence, indicating a deception taking place between the two men. I found this idea particularly exciting, as usually you are taking images of people either aware, or unaware. This is a combination of the two, and something I'd definitely like to explore from a photography point of view in my future studies.
Two still-life works - Jan Davidsz De Heem's A Still Life with a Nautilus Cup (1632) and Evaristo Baschenis' A Still Life with Musical Instruments (1660) I found very inspiring, as I've found still-life subjects to be very challenging to work with in photography, the challenge being to make it an interesting image. There is less difficulty when the objects themselves are inherently interesting, or have great colours, but otherwise I have found the subject a bit of a stumbling block. After seeing these two paintings, I realised that I should be thinking less about the objects themselves, and more about their 'condition'. In Heem's work, he uses light to great effect, and it is the condition of the silverware being bathed in what appears to be natural light, that gives the work interest. It is less the objects and more the light itself which is the subject of the image, at least in my eyes. In Baschenis' painting, I was particularly struck by the layer of dust coating the lute in the bottom right-hand corner. If I were to photograph that same scene, natural instinct would be to give the instrument a wipe over, to make it clean. Instead, in future I think I would take great consideration in keeping the lute in its dusty condition, giving extra character, context and meaning to an otherwise mundane scene.
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