COMPOSITIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE BALANCED

In a 1980’s movie entitled “The Hit,” two characters have a conversation at the base of a lighthouse. The camera is on the ground looking up and the bulk of the lighthouse dominates the dead center of the frame. One character is leaning against a car in the foreground on frame left, and the right side of the frame is empty.
Over the course of this shot the character in frame has a conversation with a character who is not in the frame. The off-balance framing creates a lot of tension until the very end of the scene, where the other character steps into the empty part of the frame and balances the composition.
This little scene showed me that compositions take place not just in space but in time as well. Keeping a frame unbalanced for a period of time can build dramatic tension, and later completing the composition can release it. I’m constantly looking for opportunities to do this.
There’s another style of composition that frames for an object, such as a building or architectural feature, that focuses attention by introducing something else that just doesn’t seem to belong. Imagine a distant shot of the Taj Mahal, symmetrically framed down the center of the reflecting pool, and then introduce a single person into the environment anywhere in the frame. No matter how small that person is, as long as they are visible we will be drawn to look at them because they are the one thing that’s out of place in an otherwise perfectly balanced composition.