Image composition in astrophotography

[michaelmorris]

Firstly, I'm not sure if this posting would be best placed in the Imaging-Discussion section or the Photography section.

Over the last few weeks I've been slowly making my way through the archive of the excellent 'Astro Imaging Channel' Youtube channel.  These are recordings of weekly hourly long live chats on Google Hangouts with a mainly US audience and chatroom.

I came across a thought provoking session on what makes a good astronomical image called 'The Five Cs of Astroimages'

It isn't a prescription for how to take a good image, it's more a musing on what thought processes one might think of going through when taking and processing astronomical images.  I was particularly interested in the very brief section on image composition.  I already know a little about the subject, such as the rule of thirds, the use of lines to draw your eye into a picture and the idea of framing the subject.  

This has inspired me to find out more about image composition in photography and how these principles might be applied to astrophotography.  Can anyone suggest some further reading on the subject?

Thanks.

[ollypenrice]

I'd look at the world of fine art, where the masters gave this a great deal of thought.

Olly

[wimvb]

Robert Gendler has a chapter on this in his book 'lessons from the masters'.

After 'making every photon count', one of the better books on AP, and well worth the investment.

[michaelmorris]

22 hours ago, wimvb said:

Robert Gendler has a chapter on this in his book 'lessons from the masters'.

After 'making every photon count', one of the better books on AP, and well worth the investment.

Thanks Wim

I've already got his book, but obviously missed this chapter.  That's this evening's reading matter sorted. 

[michaelmorris]

6 hours ago, michaelmorris said:

Thanks Wim

I've already got his book, but obviously missed this chapter.  That's this evening's reading matter sorted. 

Nice chapter, thanks for pointing it out. It's not exactly an exhaustive exploration of the subject, but it certainly puts some more ideas in the melting pot.

[wimvb]

The rules are basically the same as for daytime imaging (=photography, painting, sketching, etc), as Olly already pointed out. You 'just' have to figure out the subject of interest in any image.

What I try to fix first in composition, is to make sure there are no intrusions and distractions along the edges of my images. Such as cropping bright, half stars, or a nearby bright, half nebula. Unfortunately, there isn't always more you can do, since we can't play much with focal length or image crop, like a daytime imager can.