What is Composition?
Composition is the laying out of the 'elements' in a photograph. The elements
are any objects appearing in the picture. For example you may have a person
with some rocks in the foreground and the sea in the background with the horizon.
The way you set your picture up by positioning all of the these features makes all
the difference to how your photo will look. If you don't take any notice of
how you compose your shot you'll more than likely end up with a holiday snap picture.
If you think about the composition you can get a really interesting looking picture
out of almost anything.
There are a few simple ways of laying out elements in a picture. Most of these
ideas are about how people look at the picture and how their eyes travel over the
image.
Rule of Thirds
This is the first thing most books cover when talking about composition in photographs
(or paintings for that matter). The theory goes that the best way to lay out
the elements of a picture is on a 3x3 grid (like naughts and crosses or tic-tac-toe
for Americans).
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Rule of Thirds - This picture demonstrates how the 'Rule of Thirds' can be applied.
By positioning the elements (two sailing boats and a motor launch in this case)
on the lines and intersections of the lines a more pleasing picture is produced.
You don't have to stick to this rigidly. The right hand boat doesn't fit the
rule, but the photo still 'works' pretty well. The rule is there as a good
starting point, but you don't have to get bogged down by it! |
Lead-In Lines
This is another simple way of laying things out in your picture to make it more
interesting. Find something to lead the viewers eye into the picture.
Paths, the edges of a lawn, a river anything that takes the eye from the bottom
towards the main feature of the image.
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The pier with people sitting on it leads the eye into the lake and to the mountains
beyond |
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In this picture the railway line leads the eye to the person walking into the distance.
Take the line away and the picture would be very boring. |
Although both of these examples use straight lead in lines you can use wavy lines
e.g. a meandering river, tyre tracks curving through a field etc.
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