Behind The Frame Monday: Composition and a New Perspective

I love being able to find new and different perspectives to shoot from, and one that I don’t get to do very often is from above.  This was taken on a honeymoon session in Costa Rica and the resort had two split Jacuzzi basins at the end of a cliff looking out to the jungle.  I shot a few wider where you can see the jungle behind them, but my favorite was this more intimate moment where they leaned in to give each other a kiss.  It’s a classic intimate moment: the slight smile right before they kiss, but by shooting from above I can also instantly provide the context that their in a pool and with the hint of green behind them, somewhere tropical.  I’ve talked before about creating triangles in your compositions and both the bride and groom create perfect triangles for visual interest and they even create a triangle by being together- doubly pleasing for the viewer’s eye as they travel through the composition.  The viewer’s eye can enter the composition at her smile and easily travel down the brighter spots in the image, which are their arms, leading the eye on a diamond shaped loop around the image, further echoed by the triangular edge of the jacuzzi in the background.  When you have an image this simple the composition should be spot on to give the image enough visual interest to make the viewer stay and look for a while before pushing next, as so many of us do too quickly in our visually overloaded digital lives.