Composition: A new way to see
The Rules of composition: 4 quick tips!
The rules of composition tell you where to put you subject in the frame. They guide you to create balance and harmony in my photography.
These tips will help you compose photos and videos that are more visually appealing, hold attention, and just stand out from the quick 'snapshots' many of us are too often guilty of capturing.
Fill The Frame / Cropping
Simplify the scene: de-clutter the background! If your shot is in danger of losing impact due to a busy background/surroundings, crop in tight around your main point of focus, eliminating the background, so all attention falls on your main subject. This works particularly well with portraits of your children when you're trying to capture something more intimate and focused or are shooting in a busy location where what's around them would just cause a distraction. Filling the frame could involve you capturing them from the waist up or for more impact, fill the frame with just their face. Patterns are another subject that when capturing, you should fill the frame with, aligning it up carefully to ensure it's straight.
2. Understand The Rule Of Thirds
The most basic of all photography rules, the rule of thirds, is all about dividing your shot into nine equal sections by a set of vertical and horizontal lines. With the imaginary frame in place, you should place the most important element(s) in your shot on one of the lines or where the lines meet. It's a technique that works well for landscapes as you can position the horizon on one of the horizontal lines that sit in the lower and upper part of the photograph, while your vertical subjects (trees etc.) can be placed on one of the two vertical lines.
3. Don't Cut Off Limbs
Keep an eye on the edges of your frame to make sure the person you're photographing hasn't had any of their body parts chopped off by it. Cutting off your cat's tail, your dog's ears, or even part of your model's head will not only spoil your shot, but the unintentional limb chopping can also pull attention away from what the viewer should really be looking at. Of course, there are times when this rule can be ignored but for the most part, pay attention to it.
4. Line! Make The Most Of Lead In Lines / Shapes
Our eyes are unconsciously drawn along lines in images, so by thinking about how, where, and why you place lines in your images will change the way your audience views them. A road, for example, starting at one end of the shot and winding its way to the far end will pull the eye through the scene. You can position various focal points along your line or just have one main area focus at the end of your line that the eye will settle on. Shapes can be used in a similar way, for example, imagine a triangle and position three points of focus at the end of each point where the lines of the shape meet. By doing so, you create balance in your shot as well as subtly guide the eye.
5. High / Low: Change your perspective!
Instead of taking your photo at eye level, move around your subject, get above, below, from an angle. Move around until you find something unique. Experiment with a bird's eye view (getting above the subject) or a worm's eye view (getting below) to create a compelling perspective.
