Photography for leisure or as a professional activity captures memories and conveys messages. Photos can create excitement, sadness, urgency, and can move people into action. Have you seen a billboard advertisement that stayed in your mind for hours? That advert gave you a message that connected with you. Advertisers create emotions through photography to get you to buy their products. Photographers do the same, telling their stories through their photo composition.
What is photo composition?
Photo composition is arranging the unique features of what you see in your camera’s viewfinder to create points that draw a viewer’s eye. Your blank canvas is what you see through your camera’s viewfinder.
Which techniques can you use to create the best photo composition?
Techniques To Achieve the Best Photo Composition
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Rule of Thirds
An artist divides his drawing or painting canvas into sections with grid lines. This division enables the artist to place his objects into perspective. The same is true in photography. Images shot off the center allow the viewer’s eyes to travel towards your primary photographed object.
Divide what you see in your frame into nine equal parts or rectangles. Crossing two vertical rows with two horizontal lines evenly positioned across the photo. Next, move your camera to a position that places your primary object close to the intersecting points of these lines. But do not worry if you can’t achieve this on the spot. You can slightly correct the placement during editing.
Although it takes practice, it is one technique that photographers use to produce unique photos. The good news is that most smartphones and professional cameras now have grids or grid line features. Under camera settings, select whether you want to have the overlay of grid lines.
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Photo Depth and Dimension
Look at the space that stands between you and your object. This space is your foreground. The closer you get to an object, the more you lose out in the foreground. When you move further away from an object, the more foreground you include in your frame. The space between your object and whatever is behind it is the background. To create depth, allow some of the foreground and background features into your photo frame.
Another way to introduce depth and dimension into your photo is using perception. Imagine looking far into the horizon at a mountain or valley. The further the object is away from you, the smaller it appears. I’d encourage you to place an imaginary triangle with the starting point on the farthest target from where you stand. The narrow part of the triangle will be the object. As your eye moves from this focal point to other areas between you and the subject, they will keep appearing larger. We know this view as photo perception.
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Create Impact: Fill the Camera’s Frame
This technique is the opposite of creating depth in a photo using the foreground aspect. For example, when taking a close shot of a person’s face. The closer you move towards the person’s face, you essentially keep filling your camera viewfinder with their face. Doing this removes the negative or black space around them. In this example, the reason for filling the frame with a person’s face is to convey their emotions through a smile, laughter, expression in the eyes, or other facial features.
Final Thoughts
Photographers tell their viewers a story by how they compose their photos. Using the tips above, why not create your pictures and share them with your family, friends, or social media followers? When posting on social media, use some interesting hashtags to share them widely with others.
