Photographic composition happens when a photographer decides to choreograph the visual elements in the frame. Of course, it’s almost always more complicated than that, but it’s one of the required stops for a photographic masterpiece. (Great photographs that aren’t beautifully composed are almost always a picture of an incredible moment—something amazing is happening in the picture, but that’s a conversation for another day.)
Sure, what you photograph is of paramount importance. But when you’ve decided on what, you need to stay completely vigilant about how it all fits together as one piece of art—where does everything go in the frame?
While you are at it, you might want to ask yourself why—why did you put it there, too. That’s also a good exercise in visual communication. Not always easy to answer, by the way.
What does the placement of everything in the frame say about the subject, or about you, for that matter. I don’t mean to put undue pressure on you, but in the world of photography you are almost more important than the subject. That’s right. How you compose a photograph says a lot about you.
Middle? Top? Bottom? Right? Left? Top right? Bottom left? East? Southeast, north by southwest, north by northeast but just a little bit northeast, and all kinds of nuanced in-between areas. And successful compositions are not always determined by where any old object might look good in the frame. Color can be a big determinant of where something goes to make a composition that sings. And shape and brightness and darkness and repeated patterns and the subject’s relationship to the background and the edges of the frame and the middle of the frame. The photographer’s composing tools go on and on.
And yes, sometimes the most direct route to impactful photography is to ignore the rules and put your subject right smack dab in the middle of the frame, despite what people like me repeatedly tell people like you. Yes, you can do that—when it works. But you need to understand when it works and when it doesn’t.
There are so many variations on a theme, and all of them are an attempt to make the picture compelling or beautiful or dramatic or surprising or entertaining or informative or flattering or frightening or any number of ways a human being could react to the way a photographer looks at something. That is after all what we’re doing here, we are showing people what we look at and how we see it.
Then there is the rule-of-thirds. It is a perfectly respectable and tried and true three word compositional lesson that basically says this:
Divide a rectangular frame into thirds horizontally and vertically. Put your subject at the intersection of any two of those lines.
The rule-of-thirds is a lifesaver for photographers who are just not feeling it that day. If you mindlessly put whatever it is you’re photographing slightly off center—which is basically what the rule-of-thirds is telling you to do—your photograph just got better by a factor of about ten.
And if you follow the rule-of-thirds every single time you ever take a picture for the rest of your life you are going to end up, compositionally speaking, in the top 25% of photographers who will take a picture today.
Does that mean that composition is a mindless exercise? No. It means that there is an approach to composition that is fairly straight forward and will serve you well if you don’t want to be bothered.
But if you want to be a great photographer, or even a really good photographer, you want to be bothered. Trust me, you do. You are probably still here because you are ready to be bothered. All of the greatest photographers in the world are regularly bothered and anguished about a photograph’s composition and sometimes it pays off beautifully. Not every time, but at the very least, they have eliminated bad compositions from their photographic language. Every little miscellaneous piece of minutia becomes part of the grand scheme of any photograph’s composition. The photo collections of the world’s most famous art museums are witness to that.
Composition of visual element in photography is what composition of melody, harmonies, dynamics, and tempo are to music and both are difficult to teach. Everyone knows that a good melody is a good thing. But knowing what a good melody is does not necessarily make you a good melody maker.
The way you learn how to write melodies is to listen to music.
When Paul McCartney was a boy his musician father had a huge, eclectic record collection. Paul said that as a boy he listened to every record in the collection. He was uploading musical data, just like a computer hard drive…his words.
Then, when he met John Lennon, it was time to output. At that point, he felt that he knew every musical trick in the book—his words. Beatles music is full of the secrets revealed to him by unexpected sources in his father’s collection. Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Mozart, Benny Goodman, Beethoven, Fats Waller. And the more predictable—Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Elvis. The list goes on and on.
And it did not hurt, McCartney says with a smile, that he was a genius.
That never hurts. But lack of genius credentials is not going to keep you and me from doing what I’m talking about here.
It’s unlikely that anyone within distance of my words here is a photographic compositional genius. But there are things that can be done to improve the way just about anyone rearranges all those objects within that most intimidating rectangle. (And yes, the very best compositions deal with every single thing you see in the picture.)
And it can be fun, too. And you can change the way you arrange and rearrange so many things in your life. Your furniture. The paintings on the wall. Your sock drawer. There’s actually a lot of satisfaction to be had with all of those, but nothing compared to letting your eyes communicate for you with people lucky enough to see your photographs.
There are so many things to consider when you are the one holding the camera and a group of subjectsis standing around waiting for you to tell them what to do. It is not a low pressure situation. Lighting, exposure, point of view, and lens choice are among the obstacles.
But when you find yourself up against the photographic brick wall, you always have one fallback position that can bail you out. Composition. Composition may not be easy to teach or learn, but it is your friend, a friendship that needs to be nurtured.
Composition is a tool to express your heart, but also a way to dig yourself out of just about any photographic dilemma. There is always something you can do with your composition to elevate the photograph.
But the way to learn composition is not to wave your camera around all willy-nilly hoping something turns out. It is to look at the work of the great ones and evaluate what they have done with what they’ve been given. It’s what Ansel Adams did. It’s what the photographers at Life Magazine did. And by the way, it’s what Paul McCartney did. It’s what Beethoven did. It’s what van Gogh did. It’s what Mark Twain did.
For years probably the most frequent and basic approach to composition we’ve discussed in our courses boiled down to this: don’t put your subject in the middle of the frame, I would say. I still think that’s a rather useful. But it’s important to remember there’s so much more to composition than the rule of thirds, and when you understand how to use all the elements of composition together you can create truly compelling images.
Composition is something that can be learned and improved and one way to do that is by being part of a community sharing photos and evaluating and discussing each other’s composition communally. We all have a different way of looking at the world and we all bring our own personalities to every composition. As a group, we can share these differences and discover new avenues and ways to direct our viewers eyes. And their hearts.
Tomorrow I’m going to share with you what goes on in my head when I compose my photographs.
But for now, please let me know in the comments which aspects of composition you’re confident about and which you’d like to understand better or experiment with more.
