The Frame

This unique composition was taken with awareness of the hanging lights below.

The concept and application of the frame in photography is the senior principle in composing a picture. I am not talking about the matting and framing that occurs to a piece of art at a Framery. Instead I am talking about the frame in your viewfinder. The frame or boundaries of a picture are THE dimensions which you choose and which isolate the universe around you. It is by placing these dimensions or borders over the world using the viewfinder that you select what to portray in your final image. Yet this most basic principle is not known by most people. After teaching photography for years and working with both beginners and more advanced artists, I’ve finally seen that this point is almost always misunderstood and not applied.

In my previous essay called The Dimensions of Photography I spoke of the frame but in retrospect I see that scant attention was given to it. Here is an excerpt from that essay:

“Let us couple the first two dimensions as they fall under the heading of composition – the selection of elements to fall within the borders of one’s picture.
“When looking through the viewfinder one needs to be very aware of the borders of his composition.
“There are many rules and tips that fall within the subject of “composition”, but it must be understood that all of these rules fall within the confines of the frame and the first two-dimensions.”

So to be more thorough, let’s define what the frame is in regards to taking a photograph: The frame is the borders which can be seen through the viewfinder that select and isolate the world in your view. That which is inside the frame will be in your image. If there is a lot of space around your subject within the frame, then that space will be there in your final image. Now more importantly, let’s define framing, as herein lay the action which is missing from many a shutterbugs picture-taking. Framing is the recognition of the borders of the viewfinder and consciously placing those elements of the world that one wants included in his final image, inside those borders.

Of course one can crop later, and there is such a thing as purposely leaving some unwanted space or dunnage within the frame. This is fine as long as it is conscious. A drill to improve ones compositions and framing techniques is simply to take pictures paying particular attention to the borders of one’s viewfinder. Do this and soon you will be doing it as if second nature.