Good Composition - Layers in Street Photography
Vineet Vohra, street photographer and human par excellence, is single-handedly bringing me out of my pandemic photography malaise. It has really been as simple as watching a couple of his inspiring videos. One of them, A to Z of Street Photography, I linked to in a Sunday blog. If you missed it, you can find it on his Instagram account @vineet_vhora. In this blog, I am going to take up “L is for Layers”, but first I have to set the scene a bit.
Photo by Susan Schiffer. Used with permission. You can see her Instagram gallery at @susan.schiffer.
I have written about taking my first street photography workshop with Vineet in December at the Miami Street Photography Festival. Talk about a stranger in a strange land. Most of my fellow compatriots, along with Vineet, use Leica cameras. Vineet is a Leica Ambassador, for goodness sake. It was not the fancy brand that was difficult for me. I revel in being counter culture. I was shooting at 80 mm using a live screen with my mirrorless Olympus. They were shooting at 28mm using range finder cameras. Vineet is a master at layering and that was one thing he was teaching in the workshop. I certainly did not have layering as a goal. I did not even know what layering was.
Photo by Fernanda Bayler. Used with permission. You can see Fernanda’s gallery on Instagram at @nanda_bayler.
As I am want to do, let’s start with a definition. A layered image has multiple subjects or elements across different depths of field in one frame.
At the very minimum, the goal is to have three layers: the foreground, the middle ground and the background. You have to have an element in each plane. As I write it, it’s sounds like a landscape photo. It is a technique to bring 3 dimensions into the 2 dimensional world of photographs.
Photo by Yer Soliven. Used with permission. You can see Yer’s Facebook gallery at Yer Soliven.
Layered images are necessarily going to be complex. First and foremost, you have to have a good figure to ground relationship because your viewer has to be able to easily find the subject, or “hero” as Vineet likes to say.
You have to be close to your foreground element or subject. Foreground helps to create scale so that the viewer has a sense of size to feel distance.
It is critical to avoid overlapping figures. Gestalt Theory tells us that we group things in an image by proximity. Overlapping subjects will be perceived as a single unit and not in separate planes.
There is an advantage to shooting in color because color helps us separate subjects. But there is also an advantage to shooting in b&w because the use of contrast helps with figure to ground separation. It is easier to get good contrast with b&w.
Photo by Deborah Sofferman. Used with permission. You can see Deborah’s Instagram gallery at @peoplelookingat and her website at PeopleLookingAt.com.
White is a particular composition killer in layered photos. A white bag in the image, for example, will draw the eye away from the subjects.
Using a 28mm to 35mm lens is a standard for this kind of composition. A longer lens will compress distance. I had no trouble keeping my Olympus zoom on the equivalent of 28mm. I had a lot of trouble getting close enough to my subject at that focal length. This is not the time to use a shallow depth of field. At the workshop, Vineet recommended f/11 to f/13. In a “light” pinch, I will even use f/9. Multiple subjects require a relatively fast shutter speed. Think a minimum of 1/250 second. To make all of that work, you will probably never be at an ISO less than 800. I also was able to use a fixed manual focus. I am a little unclear on this, but I think focusing about 5 feet away is common. I know some people focus at other distances, up to 12 feet. I rarely use manual settings, but I find in this circumstance they are almost mandatory. The shooting parameters are quite well defined. Set it and go. If you do not have enough light, try a higher ISO.
Photo by Neil O. Lawner. Used with permission. You can see Neil’s gallery at Neil Lawner Photography. Neil exhibits at and is a member of the cooperative Soho Photo Gallery.
The use of layers is an advanced composition technique. It almost ensures an unrepeatable moment. If well done, it will be an aesthetic composition. With multiple things going on you have good odds of capturing both emotion and a story line. I do not think that this kind of composition is extremely common. I had a surprisingly hard time finding pictures for this blog, and I know where to go to find pictures!
Exercise
For a thrill, you might give layers a try.