5 Simple Tips For Composing Your Photographs

Good com­po­si­tion can take a pho­to from look­ing like a snap­shot to a pro­fes­sion­al-look­ing pho­to, that’s why I am shar­ing 5 tips for com­pos­ing your pho­tographs. Under­stand­ing aper­ture, shut­ter speed and ISO is an impor­tant part of your pho­togr­pahy jour­ney, but so is com­pos­ing your pho­tographs. Pho­tos that use com­po­si­tion rules are more engag­ing. They draw the view­er in and make an image more inter­est­ing. The pic­ture does­n’t have too many ele­ments to avoid con­fus­ing the eye, and it fol­lows one or more rules of composition.

You can have a per­fect­ly exposed pho­to, but your image will always be aver­age, nev­er extra­or­di­nary if the com­po­si­tion lacks.

Com­po­si­tion is sim­ply the arrange­ment of ele­ments used in an image. Com­po­si­tion is used through­out the Art world…in paint­ings, tele­vi­sion and pho­tog­ra­phy. And it gives your view­er’s eye a place to rest and relax.

Tips For Composing Your Photographs

Rule of Thirds

The first of the 5 tips for com­pos­ing your pho­tographs that I will cov­er is one that most of you have heard of—the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds helps you avoid hav­ing your sub­ject in the cen­ter of the frame. It says that you need to divide your image area ver­ti­cal­ly and hor­i­zon­tal­ly into thirds, and the most impor­tant parts of your pho­to (the sub­ject) should fall where the lines cross. When pho­tograph­ing peo­ple, the eyes should fall on the inter­sect­ing lines. For land­scapes, you want the hori­zon to fall into one of the thirds

In-Camera Cropping

Noth­ing says begin­ner qui­et like hav­ing your sub­jec­t’s limbs cropped in the wrong places. Pay­ing atten­tion to where you are crop­ping your sub­ject is crit­i­cal and should be a focus you imple­ment imme­di­ate­ly. Slow down, take a minute to look through the viewfind­er and make sure that all feet, toes and fin­gers are in the frame. Cut­ting your sub­ject off in an odd place stops the flow of move­ment in your photo.

Simplify

I men­tioned before that you want your sub­ject to stand out. You want the view­er to have no ques­tion about what they should look at. Avoid­ing too much going on in your pho­tos is so impor­tant, but this does­n’t mean you need to have only one thing in your pic­ture. You just want to make it clear that the sub­ject is the star.

Balance

Like any art form, cre­at­ing bal­ance in your pho­tos helps cre­ate inter­est. This com­po­si­tion tech­nique involves giv­ing every object in your pic­ture the same visu­al weight. Bal­ance is a bit of a more com­pli­cat­ed com­po­si­tion rule to use as many things must be con­sid­ered to achieve balance…textures, col­ors and place­ment of your subjects.

Perspective

Some­times I go back through my old pho­tos when I was just start­ing, and I want to go back in time and do them all over! I swear that 98% of my shots were from the same position…standing straight in front of my sub­ject! Mix it up and shoot from anoth­er angle. Try shoot­ing from above or below. If pho­tograph­ing kids or ani­mals, peek in on them while they play or get down on their lev­el. Or, shoot from the hip. Chang­ing your per­spec­tive will make your pho­tos look more professional.

Can I Break the Rules?

The short answer is yes; you can break the rules of com­po­si­tion but only do so if you know what your goal for your pho­to is. Once you learn and prac­tice the rules of com­po­si­tion, your eye will begin to see them every­where and using them will become sec­ond nature. You can take pho­tos that don’t fol­low any rule of com­po­si­tion, but you want most of your images to use one, if not more of the rules.

I have cov­ered just 5 tips for com­pos­ing your pho­tographs. Learn­ing, under­stand­ing and mas­ter­ing these rules is key to get­ting amaz­ing pictures…because once you under­stand them, you can learn to “break” them! If you want to learn more about the rules of com­po­si­tion and reach your pho­tog­ra­phy goals even faster, check out The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials class today!