Succinct. Not a word wasted. Rhythmic. The meaning Implied not explicit. Some poems work as if the words create pictures in colour. Others are as stark as a high contrast image in black and white.
Using these ideas about poetry, what makes a successful or powerful or moving poem are not a bad starting point for considering how one photographs certain people and places. A portrait can be read if the sitter has had the confidence to reveal something about what is going on behind the eyes - a narrative of loneliness, the stranglehold of a single dominant emotion, the attempt to avoid showing anxiety revealing something deeper. A landscape can epitomise a timeless quality to nature and the seasons. A seascape can explore the strangely beautiful relationship between sea and sky, cloud and wave, swell and rainfall. A photograph of a couple may reveal a powerful sensual or sexual attraction, or the awakening of a first love, or the slow fading of a trust.
In each case, the composition shapes the photograph as visual poem. The detail in the shadows or the juxtaposition of colour or shape; the way the eye is drawn towards a focal point by lines in the image - all these reflect the way in which a poet guides us through a maze of words towards their larger meaning. A great landscape photograph has a type of rhythm flowing though the image, the rhythm of the eye moving across the picture to absorb the detail, building the image to something bigger, more subtle than that first glance suggested; the eye of the photographer complemented by the analytical eye of the viewer.