Composition 101

For the first couple tutorials, we're going to move quickly through some basic composition guidelines. If you're not using them already, they're easy ways to give your pictures a big jump in quality.

<-- This is a bad picture. =(
We're going to use this picture as an example today. It's a picture of Mr. Turner, the orchestra director at Plano Senior High School. Mr. Turner is a great conductor, but there are many things wrong with this picture. Bad Vincent!

1.) What to emphasize
Before you take the picture, identify your points of interest. What is a "point of interest"? On people, it's usually the eyes. Many other objects have an "eye" too: the stamen of a flower, the peak of a mountain, the sound hole of a guitar. These points of interest aren't hard and fast - as you take more pictures, you might find other parts of the subject to act as the point of interest. Some pictures may even have multiple points of interest. In this picture, we just have one: Mr. Turner's eye. Since it's not a closeup, we can just consider his whole head as the point of interest.

2.) Where to put stuff
Once you've decided on the points of interest, you have to figure out where to place them in the picture. Our natural tendency is to center the subject. If it's the most important thing, it should be the "center of attention," right? No really. Usually, the most pleasing way to compose a shot is to divide the frame into thirds and place the points of interest on one of the intersections. Check out the awesome diagram I made as a visual aid.

Here's what the picture looks like after cropping so that Mr. Turner's head is on one of the 1/3 intersection points. A nice side effect of this crop was that the guy in the background (Mr. Kondrat, the band director) no longer competes with Mr. Turner for attention. Now, Mr. Turner is clearly the subject. Sorry, Mr. Kondrat. We'll get you in the next shot.

3.) Where NOT to put stuff
Pay attention to the empty space ("negative space") in your picture. Just as the objects in your picture are there for a reason, the areas that are empty should have purpose too.

First, an example of where to reduce negative space. The most common "bad" use of negative space is leaving too much room above people's heads. Casual photographers tend to center their subject's heads, and the top half of the picture ends up being uninspired and unnecessary... just like my picture of Mr. Turner. =)

Now for an example of where to add negative space. Another common mistake is to let a subject's gaze "fall off the page." This is one area where my picture of Mr. Turner is actually ok. Mr. Turner is looking off to the right, and there's plenty of space for him to look into. When the viewer sees the subject looking in a certain direction, his eye will naturally follow in that direction to look for whatever the subject is looking at. Pay attention to where the viewer's eye will go, and give him plenty of room to explore.

Take a look back at the cropped pictures in tip #2. There were four intersection points to choose from. Why did I pick the top-left one? Because it was the best way to handle the negative space! By picking a higher intersection point, we leave just enough room above Mr. Turner's head without wasting a lot of space. Picking an intersection point on the left side leaves him enough room to look out to the right.

4.) How to amputate
Whatever you do, don't cut off just the feet or just the hands. It's ok if you cut off 2/3 of the legs or 2/3 of the arms. Sometimes, it's even ok if you cut off the whole head and shoulders. Anything less than that, and it looks like you amputated by accident.

In the original picture, Mr. Turner's feet were accidentally amputated. He is very sad because it makes him look short. =(

In this version of the picture, I've cropped it further so that it looks like I cut off his legs on purpose. Again, I've put Mr. Turner's head in the top-left 1/3 of the picture to maintain the right spacing. Much better! =)

Putting it all together
Here's a picture that follows all of the guidelines we've talked about in this tutorial. There are clear points of interest (the people's heads), and they're both near the 1/3 divisions. The guy is gazing to the left, so we give him lots of space to look into. Finally, all hands and feet are safely within the frame.



Photography is like English - there are exceptions to every rule. These are just guidelines. Learn and practice them until they're second nature, and then break them when you have a reason to.

Anything else?
If you can spot more problems with these pictures (there are plenty), feel free to post a comment. Maybe we can get some good discussion going. =)


Edit: You guys asked some really good questions in the comments of this tutorial, and I've answered them in Composition 101: Q&A.