» Expert Photography

There are many different rules of composition, and it’s hard to know how to use them all correctly. The fact of the matter is that most people never learn how to use most of them, and that leads to some very misused and abused rules.

We’re going to look at some of the worst. Abused either because people don’t know how to use them, or because they think they do.

Each of the subheadings will link to an article where you can learn more about them.

Rules of Composition

Single Point

In my video course, I argue that this is likely the most abused rule of them all, because people don’t really seem to understand that it exists.

The general rule is as follows:

The further you place a single point of interest from the center of the frame, the more interesting it becomes, but the more justifcation you need for it to be there.

When you place a single point in the center for the frame, such as a person’s face, it needs no justification for being there, but it’s by no means interesting.

Conversely, when you place a single point way off into the corner, then it will portray a very different feeling. Have a look at the photo below. I wanted to display a feeling of loniliness and a great expanse by placing the boat in the corner. This would not have been achieved if the boat was in the center of the frame.

Always consider what you’re trying to portray with you photos, as this will dictate your placement.

Rule of Thirds

This is likely the first rule that you ever learned, as it’s probably the most popular rule. The trouble is, some people treat it as gospel, when in reality, it’s just a good guide.

The rule is as follows:

Divide your frame up into thirds – two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines. Then align important features in the frame with these lines, and the intersect points.

While it’s a very good rule, and it will help to make your photo more interesting, and add depth, it’s not a rule which should be followed blindly. Just because the rule says so, doesn’t mean that you should.

The truth of the matter is that it all comes down to placement, like it does with a single point. Too close to the center and it’s boring, too close to the edge and it’s too drastic. The rule of thirds is there to guide you to a safe area of the frame, where you’re not stepping on any toes, or making dramatic moves with your composition.

While it’s a great rule, and one that you should all know about, you need to consider what you’re trying to convey with your photo. It can start to look very structured if you follow the rule blindly, and that appears to be quite obvious.

Horizon Placement

All too often people think it’s a good idea to place their horizon in the middle of the frame, when in reality, this is just diving the photo in half, and making it look dull.

Here’s the general rule:

If you were to decide that the top half of the frame is much more interesting than the bottom, then you may want to adjust your composition so that the horizon is low in the frame. And vice versa. Find the interesting part of the frame, and adjust the horizon placement to emphasise this.

It’s a great rule, and one you should absolutely follow, although most people don’t.

Think about it. How interesting is a plain blue sky in your photo, compared to what’s happening on the ground? Not very.

Triangles

Triangle have a strong hold on your photos, although it seems that most people don’t quite understand exactly what they do. It all comes down to the apex (Latin for summit, peak, tip, top, extreme end) of the triangle, and where that’s positioned.

The general rule is as follows:

Lines, paths, and points of interest in a photo, are combined to create a triangle. The positioning and direction of this triangle can change the perceived stability of a photo.

Because a triangle has so much control over the stability, you need to be more careful about using the incorrectly, than not using them at all.

For a photo of a building, you would likely have a flat ground at the bottom, with an apex at the top, which appears to be very stable, but if you rotate the angle of your camera, this will start to appear less and less stable.

If you want to make your photo appear unstable, then this is a really powerful rule to be able to control.

Balance

There is some form of balance in every photo we look at, and it’s up to us to determine whether we want the photo to be balanced, or unbalanced.

Here is the general rule:

Balance is at the base of every composition; it determines whether the photo is pleasing and harmonious to look at, or rather uncomfortable and unresolved. It all comes down to visual weight and placement, which decides whether the left side is heavier than the right, or vice versa.

I won’t go into too much detail about balance, because you can read all about it here, but the general gist is that we look at a photo like a weighing scale. If there’s too much going on, on the left, then the photo is unbalanced to the left. Whether we want the photo be balanced or not us up to us, but it pays to know why you may or may not want it to be.

A balanced photo is pleasing and harmonious, and unbalanced photo is uncomfortable and unresolved. Which do you want your photo to be, and more importantly, why?

The more aware you are of the effects of balance on your photos, the better your photography will be, so it pays to think about how you want to portray your image before you pick up your camera. Degrees of balance is at the heart of every photo and can’t be ignored so use it wisely, and remember, that any technique, if used to excess, is going to lose its worth.

A lot of people think that they can’t take good portraits because they’ve not got the right lens, or the right lighting, but that’s simply not true at all. Learning how to take great photos takes time, but these 10 tips should make a big difference if you start to follow them all.

Experiment with Focal Lengths

You’ve probably heard the term ‘portrait lens’ before, and that’s because portraits typically look best at slightly longer focal lengths of around 70-115mm, but that doesn’t mean that they’re the only lenses that you should use. I like to shoot with a wide angle quite often, and they can make for some really interesting portrait photos, as you can include more in the frame than you would have been able to at a longer focal length.

In the photo below, I was able to provide context to the shot, along the dark shadows, and details to the large rocks, that would have been cropped out to a simple blue sky if I’d used a longer length.

Experiment with the Background

It always amazes me that someone would shoot with a white background, when with just a little bit more effort, they could have found a much more interesting location. The background is part of the photo too, and it can help to provide the viewer with more information about the photo. I like to take models out to interesting locations that I scout out beforehand, because the results are much more natural, and if I find somewhere outside, the lighting can produce a wider range of results.

Even when you have to have a fairly plain background like in the photo below, It’s easy enough to find a location just slightly more interesting, which will produce a much better photo. When you compare the paleness of the wall, to the texture of the wooden door, there’s no question about which is better.

Break the ‘Rules’ of Composition

I like to go on about how important composition is to taking good photos, and that’s because it is, but equally important is knowing how to use this new knowledge properly, and knowing when to forget it. The ‘rules’ of photography are made to be broken, and often you can produce the best results when you forget about what you’re ‘supposed’ to be doing, and go ahead and shoot whatever feels right. I find this often comes about when I’m experimenting, or taking test shot, and more often than not, when I’m not even looking through the viewfinder.

The most common rule for taking photos of people is the rule of thirds, and it works tremendously well, but when it comes to portraits, forgetting about this rule can be much more dramatic. Have a look at the photo below as an example.

Play with Eye Contact

If you’ve read my tutorial on visual weight, or eye-lines, then you’ll know all about the power that eyes have in a photo. They contain some of the strongest visual weight in any photo as we’re naturally used to looking at them, so you should use this knowledge to your advantage. When the eyes are looking straight down the lens, we look at them first, and then look at the rest of the photo in order of interest. When the eyes are looking away from the camera, then they can be much more powerful at times, as we become naturally interested in where the subject is looking.

Have a look at the comparison I’ve set up below, and see which one strikes you as being the most interesting. Portraits typically have the subject looking down the lens, but that doesn’t mean you have to.

Try Candid Photography

I love candid photography so much that I actually wrote a whole post on the topic, because it’s not often that you capture people in their natural state in any other way. As soon as you point a camera at someone, especially if you shout ‘say cheese!’, people become self conscious, tense up and you lose any natural feeling to the photo. There is a way around this, which I cover in my final point, but overall, these photos tend to lose their spark.

When people aren’t aware that you’re looking at them, you can wait patiently for the right moment to capture an image and end up getting much better results. You can also provide much more interesting foreground and background details as where you’re shooting from will also be captured in the shot.

Play with Light

An exposure is really just a capture of light for a certain amount of time, so to make an exposure more interesting, it makes sense that you would want to play with this light. You can mess around with flashes, longer exposures, light painting, slow sync flash, rear curtain flash; the posibilites go on. I personally enjoy slow sync flash because you capture more than just the subject and the light, you capture the movement too. Lighting is a really easy and fun way to blow a load of money, but it’s doesn’t have to be if you don’t want to, you can get some really cool results with just a $3 flashlight. The key is to experiment.

Frame within a Frame

As you can probably tell from this post alone, I’m a big fan of including context in a photo, to give the viewers an idea of the mood of the image, as well as the location. Frames are a great way of using a photographic elements to lead the viewers eyes into the frame to focus them on a particular point, and the sense of repetition that they can provide produce depth and a path for the eyes to explore.

A photo of a scene with a foreground feature makes for much more interesting build up to the main part of a photo, which in this case is a subject. They’re often underused in photography, as they can be hard to find at times, but when you successfully pull it off, it can produce some really good results.

Change Perspective

It’s natural to want to take a photo of someone head on, but that can make for a boring photo because it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Why not try making it more interesting by changing your angle of view and tackling the subject from a new perspective. When you stop thinking about taking the photo on the same plane as the subject, you can start to get much more creative, as you suddenly have way more options.

You can take the photo from above, below, to the side and slightly down; you have 360 degrees of posibilites. Often these photos come about a result of the location that you’re shooting in, such as my photo below. We were on some rocks on the beach, and they were constantly varying in height, so I climbed on top of one and shot down. I was very happy with the result.

Shoot in Black and White

Although I love black and white photography, I don’t shoot in it nearly as much as I probably ought to, but one of the places that black and white photography works really well is in portraits. I always recommend that you shoot in colour and RAW when you’re trying to take black andwhite photos as it leaves you with more possibilites in post.

Black and white photography is more about shape, form and contrast, which comes in very useful for portraits. For black and white post production, you can afford to get a little bit more creative as it’s easier to hide your techniques, such as boosting the contrast like I’ve done below. I also boosted the green channel when I converted the photo to black and white, but other then that, I’ve not really done anything to the photo.

Have Fun

This sounds so soppy, but it really is one of the keys to taking good photos. When someone is naturally smiling or laughing, it makes a really big difference. You can always tell when someone is forcing a smile, whether it’s in a photo or in real life, and it’s such a shame to force a smile when the subject is happy anyway.

I talk a lot to people when I’m taking photos of them, and although this often results in a lot of dud photos where their mouths are moving, I usually get a lot of people laughing at the same time. A natural laugh produces the best type of smile, as it can be in the whole face, head and body, rather than in just the mouth and cheeks. You can clearly tell that the model in the photo below is enjoying herself and laughing away as I was taking this photo.