2.1 Framing (3 min. read)-2

The outside border of your photograph is the first composition tool. A frame is inevitable; its placement reflects a choice. While cropping an image is always an option, it's better to start with a deliberate frame. Why? Because cropping involves losing information and then magnifying the image, lowering resolution. So unless you're shooting with a 20+ megapixel  camera, you'll get better pictures by making smart framing choices from the start.

Framing also involves choosing or even creating an interesting subject for your picture. What and who is inside and outside the frame? How much of the area within the rectangular or square frame is devoted to a human subject versus a landscape or built environment? How does the frame draw our eye into the picture?

[IMAGE: From the bus window a woman sitting beside graffiti wall, Indonesia, 2008, Natasha Watts.]

Built and natural structures can provide the framing edges of your composition. In the photograph above, a low wall and the building foundation form the bottom of the photograph, while a vertical pipe dissects the left and right halves of the composition.

Using artificial objects with straight edges for framing can produce interesting visual effects. Repeated lines can lead our eyes into a picture. Notice how the ceiling timbers in the photograph below create a top border. They also point like a series of arrows, drawing the eye down and into the foreground, creating more interest.

[IMAGE: Virginia Tech chapter of the Society of Women Engineers hosting a women in STEM careers training session for secondary school children in Malawi, 2019.]

This photograph captures a STEM teaching moment. A technical model is at the physical center of the image, but individual people are much larger than the prototype. 

Photographing engineers in the field often involves choosing how much of a machine to include. Framing choices affect how much of the composition is filled by machinery, lab equipment, infrastructure, etc. versus human subjects. This can communicate the relative size or importance of people versus technologies.

This is important, because human faces and figures usually will attract viewer's attention first. But effective framing can create interest even when there are no people visible, as for example when photographing a natural landscape or heavily engineered environment.

Below, the frame helps viewers focus their attention on the man operating the pump in blue. The attentive posture of the two students on the left outside the wooden frame creates a double-framing and invites us to direct our gaze towards the technician's hands. We look where they look and it piques our curiosity:

[IMAGE: Mechanical engineering students Ashley Taylor and Garrett Burks, studying a pumping system during field study in Malawi for senior design project, summer 2013.]

Wise framing choices can make an interesting picture from a mundane subject. Poor framing choices can render a confusing or unfocused image.

Consider the strengths and weaknesses of the framing of Virginia Tech students visiting Colombia below:

[IMAGE: Virginia Tech students visited the Faculty of Mining at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín with Professor Nino Ripepi in October 2018. Colombian students and professors were preparing to go out on strike to demand greater funding for higher education, signaled by the banner hanging on the wall below one of the university's many murals by Colombian artist Pedro Nel Gomez Agudelo (1899-1984).]

Activity: How might you re-position yourself to frame the image better? How might you crop the frame to improve this image?