Leica M11 + Leica 50mm - My Favorite Composition Exercise
Leica M11 + Leica 50mm Summilux | Hue, Vietnam. 2025 Copyright Justin Mott
On the first day of my photography workshops, I like to warm my students up with a little portrait exercise. We travel to an exotic location, in this case the royal tombs of Hue, Vietnam with our model wearing a traditional ao dai dress. However, you don’t need to travel to my workshop or all the way to Vietnam to practice your skills in composition. You can do this at home with a friend or family member.
Leica M11 + Leica 50mm Summilux | Hue, Vietnam. 2025 Copyright Justin Mott
Commit to only one lens at a fixed focal length. For me, this was all shot with my Leica 50mm 1.4 Summilux lens, a beauty of a portrait lens if you enjoy environmental portraiture work. For this little exercise, you don’t have to love or even want to improve your portrait photography. It’s more of an exercise in composition.
For this exercise, I also want you to commit to shooting horizontal portraits only. This isn’t to say you can’t or shouldn’t shoot vertical portraits, but for now, limit yourself. Our eyes are side by side, not on top of each other, and horizontal frames often encourage us to think more about environment, balance, and storytelling. Just saying.
Leica M11 + Leica 50mm Summilux | Hue, Vietnam. 2025 Copyright Justin Mott
Find a location with nice texture and backgrounds. The royal tombs of Hue are filled with vibrant hues of green, pink, and yellow. First, survey the area and find about five areas that catch your eye. Place your model or subject within each area and commit to capturing five or so different compositions from each location you choose. Start with what’s comfortable and work your way into compositions that feel strange and new to you.
For most people, what’s comfortable will be a tight, vertical shot of someone’s face filling the frame. Since we’re avoiding that here, you’ll need to push past your instincts. Move with your feet, not with your lens. Remember, you’re only using one lens at a fixed focal length. Scan the area for things to shoot through, textures to layer into your images, and backgrounds and colors that complement your subject’s clothing. Pull back farther and farther, and don’t limit yourself to traditional portraits of your subject standing still and looking at your camera.
Leica M11 + Leica 50mm Summilux | Hue, Vietnam. 2025 Copyright Justin Mott
This is an exercise, not an editorial assignment, so experiment. Have your subject walk past walls, sit down, look toward and away from the camera. Look for reflections. Get uncomfortably close and uncomfortably far away. Play with center-framed compositions, off-center frames, and occasionally don’t direct at all. Pretend you’re previewing your photos and see what posture they fall into naturally when they think you’re not paying attention, then capture that. If you miss it, that’s okay, just ask them to recreate it. For me here, our model Bi started fixing her hair or fanning herself on a hot day with her conical hat, so I captured that.
Leica M11 + Leica 50mm Summilux | Hue, Vietnam. 2025 Copyright Justin Mott
Be ready for the moments in between set shots. Give yourself time and license to fail. The key here is variety and parameters. Five locations, five different compositions, with the model in roughly the same position, is a great start. This will help you familiarize yourself with a particular focal length and, more importantly, help you see differently with that focal length. For many people, they may be used to shooting a 50mm tight on someone’s face, but what happens when you step back a bit and shoot a horizontal portrait that includes the surroundings?
Try this and let me know how it goes for you. My students always learn a lot about themselves during this exercise, and like I said, you don’t need to come all the way to Vietnam. Your spouse or your kids, in the confines of your own home, is also a perfect place to start.
Full gallery below, all images shot with a Leica M11 and a Leica 50mm Summilux lens.
