Impact and meaning change significantly when composition is altered with different lenses, camera position and in post. Multiple purposes can emerge when rethinking arrangement of elements.
The example here is a commissioned character portrait for an antique gun enthusiast. I chose this example, because with sepia tone, color has less impace on the composition. This first image is the client’s favorite, though I feel it is more static and accessorized than I’d personally prefer. He loved the old buggy wheel, but I can see it as cluttering up the composition. The eye can get trapped in its attention-getting, powerful shape.
Simply moving in with a longer lens begins to refine the visual.
I worked toward centering on personality, rather than the somewhat artificial poser in wild west lawman costume. The wheel is no longer as distracting, but still too prominent for my taste. Note that the path of the eye around the subject is now a more satisfactory loosely trapezoid shape.
Even more contemporary cropping was the direction I wanted to go. The first postproduction crop cut off the top of the hat and moved the suspicious, shift-eyed expression toward the edge of the frame. Edgy form followed the edgy meaning. It’s not enough to put a person’s nose on the edge of the frame; without a purpose for the placement, there is no story to be communicated. Then the composition becomes just an artificial trick without reason.
An accidental bonus with this new framing with a diamond composition puts the marshall’s badge close to dead center. There’s no problem with the gun barrel running off the edge, because it’s dark and the power of the lines bring the eye right back in.
The second version simplifies the composition by removing the eye-grabbing wheel spokes. Many editors will demand further simplification by lightening the dark windows to even out the background tones and also burring background details in the lower right.
Don’t let minute postproduction compositional alterations discourage you as ridiculous. In some competition venues, I have found that altering little details can be the difference between award and rejection. In commercial work you have to listen to editors; their taste for details can be the difference between publication (and a nice fee) or a big no sale.
What more can be done with an image? This is what every artist should be asking.
Repurposing and offering variations on a theme often mean extra sales.
A much tighter crop changes meaning and impact again. Why do it? The character costume and personal appearance are so good, that it has stock image potential. Yes this composition was done in post, and fortunately Canon 5D Mark II native capture is so large that even a crop this severe still comes up at respectable size and resolution. A better solution would have been to change to a 200mm lens.
Notice how the composition is now an inverted triangle shape, with the point on the star, with legs spreading to the edges of the hat and the third side closed by the hat brim and eyes.
Tiny background refinements in post will again please editors and ad people, because they will have less to do when thinking about where they would place copy and how to negate distracting details that take away from their message. Two further versions change the background in this way for different purposes. An editor could have felt the strong horizontal window bar led the eye out of the picture. Subtle changes, but listening to what clients want pays off in commissions.