Unless you want your photo subjects to look like they have strange things growing out of their hair, you want to avoid mergers when taking photographs. In fact, avoiding mergers is the sixth and final installment in the excellent free tutorial The American School of Paris has created to teach us how to improve our photographic compositions. If you’re just joining us, be sure to take a moment to read our previous blog entries on this series, starting with the introduction here.
Mergers occur when objects in the foreground merge with objects in the background, often with unintentionally hilarious results. Consider, for instance, the photo above where, on the left, it looks like our poor subject Dave has sprouted a giant green Mohawk. To avoid mergers, look for plain backgrounds before you pose your subject.
Border mergers can happen when you leave too little space at the top or bottom of your frame, which can look like you’re chopping off heads or feet or both. To fix this, simply leave more space around everyone.
Another kind of merger is the near merger, but this is perhaps the least objectionable. It happens when objects and lines are just too close to the subject. It can usually be quickly corrected by lowering the camera angle and simplifying the subject.
After you’ve worked your way through the slides for this topic, please take a moment to go back and look at the photographs you selected after reading the introduction blog post. Are there any photographs in either stack where you were the victim of unintentional mergers? What kind of mergers do you see in your photos? If you were to shoot these subjects again, how might you avoid these mergers?
Well, that’s it! We’ve gone through the six guidelines for composition. Hopefully you will find these principles useful to you the next time you’re taking pictures. As we said in the introduction, if you’re serious about improving your compositional eye: practice, practice, practice.
For “extra credit”, be sure to check out the “discussion section” at the end of the lessons, where you’ll have a chance to analyze some award-winning photographs and see how they adhere — or consciously break away from — the six compositional guidelines we have discussed here.
Happy photographing!
