Positioning a Point

I'm excited about making a start on part two of the course, as this 'graphic design' area of photography is where I will be able to push my photography forward, especially in the unseen and implied aspects. I have been made aware of the geometry of photographs before, in the video course Foundations of Photography: Composition instructed by Ben Long. I've found all of Ben Long's instructional videos that I have studied so far very useful indeed, but one thing that was not entirely clear was points. The relevant section in my course materials as well as Michael Freeman's book The Photographers Eye made it much clearer for me. Here are three of my own previously taken photographs which I think contain a point or points:

55mm, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 200

This is one of my earliest photos taken with my DSLR. Although the eagle is quite large in the frame due to the wing spread and zoom level, the fact that it is a distinct, concise shape set against a plain backdrop I think qualifies it as a point. Due to my inexperience and the speed of the bird in flight, framing would have been quite tricky, but I imagine I was trying to get the subject centered within the frame. As luck would have it, the bird is ever so slightly off-centre, creating a very modest amount of tension in the image. With hindsight I would instead have probably moved the position of the subject further to the left hand side, creating an area in front of the eagle in which it could 'travel' into.

55mm, f/5.6, 1/125, ISO 200

A more cluttered background here, but the fairly shallow depth of field brings just my subject and the three stalks at the same depth in the frame into sharp focus. Another early photo, taken a few days after the eagle image above. Again I have centered the subject due to inexperience, however I will say that looking at the image now, I could possibly justify this central position of the butterfly due to the three stalks of foliage, of which the butterfly is landed on the middle one. This creates a kind of symmetry which I do actually like, and would be lost if the butterfly were positioned either side of centre. The very light colour of the subject sets it apart from the greens and browns which dominate most of the remainder of the image.

105mm, f/11 1/50, ISO 200

This represents a perhaps not so clear-cut example of a point, in the form of a water droplet. The water droplet, being transparent, is not as clearly set apart from the background as the other examples above. Also, the yellow centre of the flower creates a contrasting rather than plain background. Nonetheless due to the difference in focus, I feel that the droplet is a point, and here it is placed slightly off-centre on both axis, creating what I feel to be a suitable amount of dynamic tension, given the placid subject matter. A too extreme offsetting of the droplet may have been jarring in the circumstances. Potentially, this image represents two points, of similar shape and size: the aforementioned droplet, and the dark circle at the centre of the yellow part of the flower. This would give an implied 'line' beginning at the top left corner and heading roughly towards its opposite in the bottom right.

95mm, f/8, 1/640, ISO 200

This image of a swan is probably  how I'd usually approach taking a photograph like this. The swan is a little off-centre (although it conceivably could be closer to the center while preserving the effect), and is positioned to the left of the frame, as its direction of travel is to the right, thereby giving the swan room to 'move' within the frame.

135mm, f/8, 1/640, ISO 200

Here, the swan is turning towards the camera, so is facing more head-on than the previous image making it a more compact shape. It is pressed right up to the edge of the frame with barely a gap, and giving no room for the swan to travel, making for a very claustrophobic feel to the image. In different circumstances, with a different, stationary, subject this may not have been an issue.

135mm, f/8, 1/800, ISO 200

In this image, the point is central on the horizontal plane, but not the vertical plane. With hindsight I perhaps should have experimented with placing the swan directly in the centre of the frame; I think I subconsciously avoided this due to the static nature of a point in the centre of the frame. With the swan facing the camera, positioning it off-centre towards the bottom of the frame, with space behind it feels more natural and dynamic, giving the impression of the swan moving towards the viewer.