How to compose a digital photograph

in Photo Blog Photography tips by Jamie HIBBERT — February 25, 2010 at 1:10 pm | 0 comments

Photo composition rule of thirds

I recently explainded Long Exposure photography and What is Depth of Field which will help provide artistic effect to your images, however, capturing a photograph is more than knowing the settings, pointing and shooting. You need to consider the the scene and how to best portray that by framing the subject correctly. This tip will help you learn how to compose a digital photograph.

For some reason, as a rule of thumb things look better in odd numbers. A photograph of three apples will generally look more balanced than just two. A photograph of five people works better than 4, for some reason it just works - speeches have gained impact by using a term three times, mathematics, writing and nature often use the rule of three.

So, how do we use this knowledge in our photography? The image above The rule of thirds from theirls flickr stream shows perfectly the rule of thirds. It is a well capture photograph, the horizontal lines create perfect thirds. The vertical line is again set on a third. If you mirrored that horizontal to the other side you would dissect the image into nine, equal boxes. Where those lines cross are you biggest impact points and where you want the focal points of your image to lie.

In this photograph I have highlighted those lines, clearly showing you the nine segments and you can see where they cross, showing you your impact points. So in practice, if you are taking a portrait photography, try and frame you image so the subjects eye falls on one of these crosses. For landscape photography, try and place horizions onto one of the lines. Vanishing points should fall under one of the intersections.

If you don’t manage to capture the photograph in camera perfectly, you can use the crop function in your editing suite to cut the image down and achieve sound placement. Many editing suites will also offer an overlay that can be used to marry up your photograph onto one of these lines or intersections.

Just remember, this is not a hard and fast rule, but it works and it is a great starting point to improve your photographic composition.