Foreground and Background Composition in Photography

Pangmen ZhengdaoQinghai People's Publishing House2014

Rating 4.1

Word count: 2.3K words
Chapters: 4

Summary

Foreground and Background Composition in Photography is a short photography tutorial of just over two thousand Chinese characters by Pangmen Zhengdao, a design and photography self-media account. The book centers on two concepts the author proposes: "pre-composition" and "post-composition." Pre-composition means composing within the viewfinder before pressing the shutter, emphasizing the principles of point, line, and plane from graphic design to gather the people and scenery in the frame into simple geometric relationships—triangles, circles, trapezoids, rectangles—so that a photo looks orderly and structured at a glance. Post-composition means cropping after shooting: cutting out passersby and trash cans or other superfluous elements, or extracting from a cluttered scene the portion that best expresses the theme, using "subtraction" to rescue photos whose earlier composition was less than ideal. The author demonstrates with comparisons of his own photos of papaya trees and Hong Kong street scenes, showing how the same original image can tell entirely different stories depending on what is kept and what is cut. The language is colloquial, with many before-and-after comparison images and a deliberately compressed theoretical section, so readers can finish it within two hours and put it into practice immediately. It suits beginners who want to quickly fix photos that lack a clear subject or contain too many elements.

Editor's review

很多摄影构图书动辄数百页，讲完黄金分割、三分法、引导线，读者依旧不知道自己那张照片差在哪里。这本小书难得地把问题收束为两个动作：拍之前想清楚，拍完之后敢下剪刀。作者用设计师的眼光看待取景框，把点、线、面这些课堂上略显抽象的词，换成了“让主体落在某个简单形状里”的具体做法，几乎不需要摄影基础就能照着试。最有价值的是后构图部分，它承认大多数人前期构图都会失手，于是教你从已有照片里抢救出可用画面，这种务实态度对手机用户尤其友好。内容短，读起来不累，适合作为系统学习构图前的“热身”读物。

Who it's for

A good fit for

刚开始学摄影、拍完总觉得画面杂乱的新手
习惯用手机拍照并希望快速提升画面主题性的读者
对设计中的点线面原理有兴趣、想迁移到摄影的人
需要极短篇幅教程、不想啃厚书的自学者

Not a good fit for

希望系统学习曝光、用光、镜头知识的读者
已具备成熟构图能力、寻求深度理论分析的进阶摄影师
期待大量案例解析和练习体系的读者

Reading tips

先读完前构图章节，再拿手机到室外用同一场景试拍三种几何构图。
读完立刻打开相册，选三张旧照做剪裁实验，体会后构图的取舍逻辑。
把它当作构图入门的第一本，随后搭配一本系统的构图教材继续深入。

About the publisher

Qinghai People's Publishing House China · Founded in 1954

Qinghai People's Publishing House is a comprehensive local publisher based in Xining, with publishing areas covering local histories and gazetteers, ethnic history and culture, literature and art, and textbooks and supplementary teaching materials. Judging from the 124 titles in the database, the press has a presence in foreign literature, social culture, history, literature, medicine, and biography. Representative books include Chinese translations of Tagore's poetry collections Gitanjali, Stray Birds, and The Crescent Moon, as well as works on history, culture, and medicine such as The History of Changes in the Yellow River, An Intellectual History of Traditional Chinese Medicine, The Pillar Testament: The Legacy of Songtsen Gampo, and Essentials of the Kalachakra Calendar. Its authors include Rabindranath Tagore, Wei Huan, Cen Zhongmian, Li Jingwei, Zhang Zhibin, Huang Mingxin, Chen Jiujin, and Shangzhuot Sangre, reflecting a publishing profile that combines the translation of foreign literature with the compilation of local historical and cultural works and traditional medical texts.

Copyright Information
About This Tutorial
Pre-Composition
Post-Composition

FAQ

这本书页数多吗，需要多久读完？

全书约两千余字，分四章，掌阅书城标注基本两小时内可以读完，属于短篇电子教程而非厚本专著。

“前构图”和“后构图”分别指什么？

前构图是在取景框里提前完成的构图，借助点线面与几何形状组织画面；后构图是对已拍照片进行剪裁，去掉多余元素或截取关键部分。

没有专业相机，只用手机会有用吗？

有用。书中大量讨论的是取景与剪裁思路，不依赖特定器材，手机拍摄同样适用。

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Pangmen Zhengdao Author

Pangmen Zhengdao is an author in the field of Chinese-language photography writing. Public information about him is limited, and details such as his nationality and dates of birth and death cannot currently be confirmed. The library holds one work by him, Composition of Foreground and Background in Photography, which is classified under art and photography. Judging from the title and category, the author focuses on the spatial relationship between foreground and background in a photographic image, a rather specific angle within composition technique rather than a broad introductory overview. Writing of this kind is usually aimed at practising photographers, emphasizing the arrangement of layers between foreground and background when framing, the placement of the subject, and the depth and visual guidance that result. Because material on the author is scarce, his writing style and overall influence are difficult to assess fully; based on this single work, one can say only that his approach is practical and clearly focused, suitable for photography readers interested in compositional layers.