By this point you should know how to get perfect exposure! If you don’t you can check out my photography basics blog post or the ones for aperture, shutter speed, or ISO. So now we know how to capture light but what do we do with the contents of the screen? You probably picked up a camera because you have an “eye” for photography. Or you just think it’s a cool thing to know. Photography or videography is a skill. Creativity is what you do with it.
The difference between someone who consistently takes good photos and those who take the occasional good photo is composition. Once you understand how to set up a shot you can practice it and get really good at it. 10,000 hrs! Composition is quite simply put; how a shot is set up. What building blocks create the picture overall. Once you can get some tricks and practice them you can develop your style and almost crystalize it into a brand. “This is me, this is how I shoot.”
The Rule of Thirds.
The most basic building block is the rule of thirds. This is why you will see a grid sometimes when cropping a photo. Or even in the camera itself. This is set up off of human behavior and where our eyes naturally go when we look at it. Nine squares, four lines, and three sections. If that scares you I will make it simpler. You want your subject to be on one of the lines.
Horizon? Get it on a horizontal line.
Cute looking cat? Get it on a vertical line.
Want a picture of a single tree centered in the frame? Get it on both lines.
The way the grid is set up as long as you are using it you can’t fail! An even more interesting point is using points of interest. Where two lines intersect is a more precise point where humans focus. So if you are taking a portrait and you want to focus on the subject’s beautiful blue eye, have the cross section of two lines land on the eye. This will draw the audience into the point of interest you want to highlight.
Leading Lines
This is one of the best ways to direct the audience's attention to points of interest outside of the rule of thirds. The reason being is you are creating a visual road map guiding the viewer to where you want them to look. The idea is simple, when looking at the frame try to find basic lines that are present in the background or foreground. Then place the subject or orient yourself in the best way to have your subject land on them.
If you are shooting outdoors or in a big room the easiest one to start with is the horizon line or corners. Literally straight lines you can place your subject in front of in order to guide the viewer to them. I like using stairways, hallways, railings, roads, and even mountains to guide the viewer to my subject.
A little bit harder version is using them to add depth. This is very easy with perpendicular lines. Think about a city street. As you look down the street you can see both vertical and horizontal lines all the way down this adds depth to the photo and can really up the impact of your photo. You can use it to capture the feeling of an impending journey or a journey you have just overcome. But that is for you to think about.
Balance
Balance is easy and obvious. You can tell if a photo is unbalanced. For me, it just feels wrong. Something isn’t right. Kind of like walking into a dark room you’ve never been in before. This can be as easy as not having enough objects on one side of the frame to match the other. Truth is a lot of people can’t communicate why something is unbalanced but sadly like me it is because they are associating it with the part of their brain that processes feeling. And humans have a hard time communicating feelings. So if something isn’t right with your photo in your mind. It’s unbalanced.
But if that idea doesn’t resonate with you, there are ways to balance a photo with mathematics. You have the grid! Use the nine squares to make quick estimates of how balanced it is. Break it down on a micro scale. Each column or row is 33% of the picture. Use this to figure out how much needs to change. No need to fixate on how exact it is because it’s kind of like splitting a cookie; you know it’s not going to be 50/50 but you’ll be happy with either half.
Now that you know how balance works feel free to go aggressive with the inverse. Art is about taking risks and experimenting. I like to take wildly unbalanced photos. It can capture the scene in a more revealing way. For instance, if the subject is someone who seems lost and disoriented, an uncomfortable frame is going to bring the viewer in more than a comfortable uniform frame. You are telling a story feel free to take the audience on whatever journey you want.
What I want you to do now is go out and try taking photos with these three things in mind. You will get more out of it if you focus on each one individually at first and then bring it all together but I’m not your mom, do what you want. But as long as you start thinking about it and start implementing these tools your photography will start to get increasingly better. You are 3 steps closer to being great!
Get to shooting!