So you got yourself a brand new digital camera, so let’s go take some photos! Without some basic photography composition technique, you find that most pictures turn out to be uninteresting. You remedy that just by learning photography basics composition techniques. There are many rules, but the rules are not the be all and end all, must follow or die type of rules. They can be broken to achieve some other interesting effect.
| Photo Composition Rule of thirds The four key points Focal point photography Follow the eyes Linear Perspective |
Composition is used extensively in any visual publishing not just in photography. It is used in advertising billboards, magazines, movies, you name it. Anything that is visual need to provide a visual impact to the design and layout to draw the audience attention and of course for admiration and enjoyment.
Sometimes what the human eyes sees as breathtaking turns out to be dismal when captured on photography. For example a beautiful panorama open space landscape is very soothing to the eyes, but when captured by a camera, it looks rather uninteresting because the barren landscape in the picture did not provide any points of interest to draw the eye.
Composition is about lines in the photo. These lines can be obviously seen such as a horizon, a wall, a pillar, a road or it could be invisible or derived lines from the direction of a person eyes looking at something or the extension of lines from buildings and roads within the picture or outside of the picture frame itself. The viewer will then intrepid the scene or picture based on these lines and draw their own conclusion. Composition is also about placement of the subject matter to give the picture a visual impact. Unusual placement would provide something unique to the photo.
One of the interesting photography is the spur of the moment candid shots and street photography where one waits for the decisive moment to take a scene. Sometimes these require patience as the photographer stands at a position for sometime in anticipation of something that he has in mind to capture. At other times, it is completely not plan at all but having spot an interesting scene presenting itself and taking the opportunity at hand to snap quickly to capture the photo. This takes practice and there can be as many spoilt shots as well as good ones.
So when viewing a scenery via your viewfinder, take note of what you want to include or exclude from your picture composition and think about how you want your final shot to look like to achieve some interesting photo that hopefully would provide some unusual photography with impact.
Another way for learning photography composition is to look at other people’s photos and try to understand what makes their picture look good and perhaps you could pick up some idea for your future photography session.
And last but not least, the composition technique can easily be applied to any photography equipment not just for digital SLR camera, but even for prosumer cameras, digital compact cameras, or even your handy dandy mobile phone. As was once said, it is not the equipment but the person behind the lens. Of course good photography equipment helps tremendously. In good hands, even a digital compact camera or a mobile phone camera can achieve some very interesting photos.