Organizing the contents of an image is a skill that ultimately plays a major part in the success of most photographs. Design, however, is something that many photographers are strangely reluctant to discuss in any detail. Part of the reason is that the decisions made during shooting are often hard to pin down; also, however, there is the fear that a bald description of how a picture is composed will somehow rob it of magic. How much justification there is for this attitude varies considerably among photographs and photographers; with some, the techniques are actually rather simple and probably best left undiscussed, but others enjoy more complexity and subtlety than might be obvious at first glance.
Composition and similar visual attributes of a picture are certainly important enough to merit a close examination, but they also need to be treated cautiously, for the role they play in photography is not the same as in painting and illustration. So much happens intuitively, and nearly always quickly, that there is a real danger of assigning too much importance to what are essentially design skills.
Whatever their subject matter, all pictures are designed in some sense, whether the composition is arranged with great care in a studio, selected from a number of alternative shots of the same subject, or achieved quickly and instinctively as is liable to happen in location photography. The relationship between the content of photograph and its composition is a dynamic one which, ultimately, involves questions of appropriateness and meaning.
