Photo Composition Basics - What You Need to Learn
Posted: Tuesday, October 05, 2010
by Autumn Lockwood
YourPictureFrames.com
One of the most important things a photographer can carry in their bag is a firm understanding of the basic elements of photography. A picture is not just a piece of photo paper, but the result of thousands of tiny variables coming together all at once. Understanding these different elements and how you can use them to take better images is critical to your success as a photographer. One of the most critical elements of photography is composition.
Composition is the way in which the subjects or objects of your picture interact with each other. You can think of it simply as where each object in a picture shows up in the frame and can also include things such as depth of field, focus and zoom. When a picture has great composition it tells a clear story but when the composition is bad, the picture becomes less appealing. If you've ever seen a photograph that seemed "good" but boring, it is likely that bad composition was the cause.
The Components of Composition
There are a few helpful rules of composition that, once learned, can have an amazing positive effect on the nature of your photographs. While these rules are by no means concrete and in photography breaking rules is often more fun than following them, they should serve to give you a baseline for understanding composition's impact on your shoots.
Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds is based on the artistic assumption that humans are naturally inclined to look at the point of an image that falls about two-thirds up from the bottom. If you imagine a photograph cut into nine equal squares, your subject should fall as close to one of their intersections as possible. Whenever you take pictures, picture the lines in your image and try to line them up for an even better result.
Balancing Your Image
While this isn't an official "rule," it is still a helpful thing to keep in mind when shooting. Position your subjects off center and use the rule of thirds but be careful of having too much space around the subject. Whenever possible, try to balance important parts of an image with less important parts - A good example would be a picture of a child running through some grass, which can be made more interesting if they are placed near one side of the frame with where they are running places at the other.
Lines
Our eyes are naturally drawn to lines. Our minds are naturally drawn to following patterns and lines so you can use this to your photographic advantage. As you line up your shot, use the lines that you see and try to make them lead to the important aspects of your image. If the viewer traces these lines and is dissatisfied with what it finds at the end, it may lead to disappointment with the image.
The Power of Cropping
Sometimes what you leave out of your picture can be as important as what you leave in. You should be cropping in your mind every time you line the camera up for a shot - Figure out what image you want to capture, and eliminate any of the distracting elements. There are methods for fixing this in the darkroom or with software, but it is far better to develop a habit of cropping in-frame.
Composition is one of the parts of photography that really takes years to master. Because it represents the culmination of several other elements, composition is something that will present a constant challenge even to the most experienced photographer. Once you have mastered the basic rules and know how they work, then it becomes time to break them.
Autumn Lockwood is a writer for Your Picture Frames. Shop online and see our selection of 5x7 picture frames in a wide variety of colors, shapes and styles. Visit our website to see our metal and wood 5x7 picture frames now or call 1-800-780-0699.
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