Originally Published iThe Basics of Photographic Composition (Originally Published 2009 ) 

In the years I was teaching workshops and later offering tips to those who ask me how to make better photographs the one constant was the topic of composition. In that time I must have come up with at least forty different ways to explain what composition was then breaking it down into simplistic terms that anyone could understand. I often found myself going back to a set of books I had from which I used in building my own foundations in composition. One book in particular was written about as simply as it could be by renowned nature photographer, John Shaw. John’s very easy to understand instructions were what my own foundation for understanding composition became.

So, what is the big secret, you’re probably asking yourself now. Right here and right now, I’m going to give you the Photographic Grail to composition in just one word. “Simplicity.” What? That’s right simplicity is the most important element in what has come to be composition in a nut shell.

Pick up your latest copy of Outdoor Photographer and start browsing through the various photographs used to illustrate the articles you probably don’t read, because as photographers, we all know, it’s about the pretty pictures not the wisdom poured out in print. Ok I know for those with a more scientific bent to photography, you read the articles and didn’t even see the photographs beyond the Use of HDR, Exposure and Color Balancing.

So stop right now and just look at the photographs. Look long and deep and in every one of them you will find “Simplicity.” Notice that the images are not cluttered up with every possible subject one could squeeze into a single exposure. What you will find are the main subject and elementsthat lead you to it and those that support the context. Sound simple enough? Probably not. So with that said let’s play around with a few things. First find the main subject of the image. Now look for diagonal lines that may start at one corner of the frame and lead into the direction of where the main subject is. Those are called leading lines. Not all are straight either, some are curved some are really curved into what may look like an “S” pattern, in any case, they lead your eye to what the photographer wants you to see!

By now you may have noticed another thing. The darn subject is not in the middle of the photograph! That’s right. There was this little thing or period of time way back in what we call the renaissance period. Around that time some artist got all bored with the paintings of the time and wanted to move all those big fat faces over to one side or another in the painting and add something that later became known as supporting elements. Now instead of King Henry the VIII’s big fact face dominating the entire painting we could see maybe where he lived or possibly one of his many wives being taken off to execution for not bearing him an heir to the throne. Two things happened; we found out that Henry’s head was not the size of a watermelon and the painting told a story.

Amazing, right? Now that painter had to balance how much stuff or supporting elements would be in the image. Now because painting by hand is painstaking to say the least, the amount of time needed to create a painting that told a story needed to be done before the subject died in most cases so that alone limited the number of supporting elements in the painting. The same holds true in photography. You could grab your 12mm Lens and stand before a grand mountain and have a wildflower meadow, a flock of geese, 2 bunnies, a babbling brook and fifty other things in your frame and snap away, but what would you end up with?

You’d end up with a photograph of everything and nothing at the same time. STOP THE INSANITY Be Patient, slow down, and think about it, but not too much! Good photographic composition takes time; great photo composition cakes even more time. Nature photos composed in ten seconds or less usually bear little resemblance to those composed in ten minutes or more. Now let me stop you right here should you ever see me out in the field and how I shoot. For me composition begins well before I take my camera out of the bag and place it on my tripod, sometimes before I get out of bed on the day of the shoot. Most of the places I shoot I have been to literally thousands of times and I havetaken a great many mental photographs selecting the ones that tell the stories I want to tell. Then when I get to the location my eye is in a way pre-tuned to what I am after, but not too much so as not to notice things that would be unexpectedly better.

Ansel Adams had mentioned this technique a few times when talking about some of his best photographs. He also talked about being open to suggestion by the scene itself and letting the scene suggest how it wants to be framed. That’s a whole different things that I think you have to be a photographic genius to understand. Galen Rowell would attest, that there are a few occasions in outdoor and nature photography when you must rapidly point and shoot or else you will miss the opportunity altogether, but many nature photo subjects change very slowly.

When you slow down to meticulously and methodically compose photos, the rewards may include a wonderful meditative experience along with vast improvement in your photos. But you must ask yourself, how much better would your nature photos be if you spent at least ten minutes composing each one?

FILL THE FRAME

Just as the painter we spoke of earlier would not leave a portion of the canvas totally blank, you should not ignore any portion of the scene that you frame in your viewfinder. That blank area is called negative space. Before telling you to always fill up the frame, keep in mind, not all negative space is negative. I will address that later when I tell you how to use negative space as an advantage.

For now, let’s make the best use of the entire “frame” of each exposure. When you look through the viewfinder, think of it as a rectangular picture frame; as you compose, make use of all the available space. Fill the frame! You can significantly strengthen many compositions by zooming in as much as your lenses allow or, if possible, getting closer to your subject. Photographic compositions are weakened when important subject matter is too small to see.

What’s your perspective?

When you get right down to it, composition is all about perspectives. Your perspective to the subject is very important. Remember that big mountain you wanted to frame up in your tiny little view finder? Well in that tiny viewfinder that big ol’ mountain gets a whole lot smaller and no matter how big you can print the mountain loses a bit of its LARGENESS. Yes I got to make up a word! Largeness and Smallness are what we call,scale. Sale is the measurement of your perspective to the subject and its relationship within the frame. Sound simple? Probably not.

Try this, the next time you go out and see a big mountain you want to photograph. Place your camera on the tripod where the camera is at eye level standing and snap a shot. Now lower the tripod in three steps snapping a new shot at each step until you are nearly at a bug’s eye level looking up at that mountain. Wait you’re not done yet! Now start over and this time frame your shot vertically and repeat the same sequence. Wait you’re still not done! Now with the camera back in the horizontal position step right or left a few feet and off center the subject and repeat the process again.

Ok now you’re done. What you just did was an exercise in perspective. Go back and review your images in a larger scale and look closely. You will notice that when you changed your high to low perspective the mountain may appear larger in scale and when you move left or right you create a foreground along with that changing scale.

Don’t Be Too Negative Man!

Remember that term I used earlier, Negative Space? I told you earlier to fill it up, but right now, let’s say you didn’t listen and have negative space in your photograph. You know, a large 1/3 or maybe 1/4 portion of the image with nothing in it of any significance at all. Well here is the “ONLY” reason you should have it in the shot.That clear blue sky area taking up 1/4th of the image is prime real estate for a magazine mast head or other text.

Now in the cover to the left you can see that because the image is simple there are a few places that the publisher chose to place text for the issue telling readers what would be inside the magazine. Check out the next copy of Outdoor Photographer and see if they plaster their Magazine title right across the most important part of the photograph.

I bet you’ll find that they found negative space to use and the photographer can show off his or her work proudly. Besides they just paid about $200 to have that shot on the cover, why cover up the best part of it? This brings me to the last point and by my own declaration the most important.

If The Camera Is A Rockin, Don’t Come A Knockin

I must have mentioned this last nugget of information at least four times but just in case you missed it I want to say it again. Use a Tripod Damn It! The difference between a snap shot and a well composed and well-made photograph is a tripod. Why? Do I really have to explain? Ok because you asked I will. Try this, get a fullyinflated basketball and then stand on it while writing your name on a chalk board. Don’t try to hold on to something while doing this either. Now look at what you wrote. Is it as sharp as it would have been had you had your feet planted solidly on the ground? If you said yes, you either have horrible handwriting or work in the circus. For the rest of us, he answer would be no. Well this would be the same for your camera. The best thing to do is think back to the old Flintstones cartoons when A Photographer took a photo, a prehistoric bird inside the camera would hand chisel out the image and presto change a beautiful picture. You can imagine a million little OompaLoompahs doing the same thing inside your camera recording every little pixel, but if you breathe the image will lose a lot of quality and sharpness.

Because most well-made photographs are made during the first and last light of the day you will need to take longer exposures. So how long can you hold your breath? Well even if you did you would still have camera shake or movement that would ruin that once in a lifetime image. When you place your camera on a tripod that is securely set you eliminate any movement from breathing or having a pulse. When you add a remote or cable shutter release you eliminate the vibration of your finger pressing down on the shutter release button as well.

Blanca Peak from Alamosa, ColoradoWhat happens next is the magic of well stabilized Oompaloompahs putting all the pixels in the right place as stead as they can.

There is much more I could cover, but like the title of this article suggests, these are just the basics of good composition.