Photo Composition Basics - What You Need to Learn

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.

The Definition of Composition

Put simply, composition is the way in which the subjects of your photograph interact with one another. You can think of this primarily in terms of where each object in a photograph shows up in the frame, however composition can be expanded on to reference things such as focus, depth of field, and zoom.

Essentially, photographs with excellent composition will tell a clear story, while photographs with bad composition will have no real narrative and will thus be less appealing. One easy way to see if a photo has poor composition is to see if it looks boring or has nothing of interest in the image.

Elements 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.

The 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 picture a photo broken up into nine equal parts, you want your subject to be as close to one of the line intersections as possible. Whenever you shoot, imagine these lines across your frame and try and line the shots up accordingly (horizons especially show great results).

Image Balance

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. Try to balance the important parts of an image with the less important parts like having the subject running to a destination instead of just a picture of the subject.

The Power of Lines

There is something about patterns of lines that naturally draws our eyes. Our minds are naturally drawn to following patterns and lines so you can use this to your photographic advantage. When lining up a shot, look for lines in the frame and ask yourself if they lead to important parts of your image. If the lines don’t do that, the viewer’s eyes will trace the lines only to be left unsatisfied that the lines lead to nowhere.

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 - get rid of the extra stuff that distracts from the subject, and fill the frame with what you want to capture. 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 elements of photography that takes years to master. Since composition is a combination of several different elements, it will always present a constant challenge to even the most knowledgeable photographer. Follow the basic rules until you understand how they work, then dare yourself to break them.

Autumn Lockwood is a writer for Your Picture Frames. Shop online and see our selection of jeweled picture frames in a variety of beautiful colors and styles. Visit our website to see our colorful jeweled picture frames or call 800-780-0699.