Shoot Better: Learning About Composition

During the last article, we wrapped up another section that discussed a couple of key basics in photography. To be more exact, we discussed the Depth of Field, Low Light Photography, and Focusing. These three general and basic concepts are critical for you to progress in your journey as a beginner to a complete and versatile manual photographer.

To review it, the Depth of Field is the distance of your subject from its background. Learning it will result to you mastering how to do bokeh shots and several more tricks concerning manipulating focus.

Speaking of focus, focusing is a rather basic but powerful knowledge that you can use to your advantage. Learning about focus can be from adjust your camera’s viewfinder to ultimately manipulating the Depth of Field.

Finally, we also touched low light photography which is a lot more advanced compared to the DOF and Focusing. Low light photography requires mastery of the exposure triangle, which we discussed during the previous articles, and actual practice.

Now that we got that off our plates, it is time to start a new section.

For the previous sections we have been talking about the camera and basically how to coexist with it. With that said, I guess it is just right that for this section we put our focus, literally and figuratively, on what is in front of the camera: the subject.

A lot of photographers were drawn into what they are doing now to capture moments and things that are just “picture perfect.” But what if whatever you do, your subject just does not look like it it worthy of a shot.

Well, you make it worth it through excellent composition.

Before the Shot

Under the assumption that your subject is far from picture perfect, composition can really make or break your photo. Composition is the work you do before the shot, it is all about what is inside your frame and how are the elements, light, and colors inside it coexist.

Composition is very important in photography. As photographers, there are a lot of scenarios that we could not control such. In the case of sports photography where you really need to increase your shutter speed and put your camera to burst mode in hopes of finding good composition.

We all know how hard it is to not have your subject under your control so when you are given the chance to compose your photo, grab it.

As mentioned, composition can make or break your photos. If exposure errors can make your photos unusable, errors in composition can make your photos straight-up ugly. So if you do not want professional and amateur critics to feast on your badly-composed photos, then you better pay attention to it.

Composition

Unlike the technical skills you learned in the previous articles, composition has less numbers. When talking about composition, all you really have are a couple of gridlines and established rules like the rule of thirds which you will learn in the next articles.

Due to the difference of mastering composition with mastering other skills like exposure or aperture, the method of adjusting composition is also different. In fact, you can even go extreme by saying that it is subjective.

When doing composition, you have to ask yourself a couple of questions. Personally, to aid me with composition, I ask myself four (4) questions. Whether to use them or build up on the guide questions I will be saying here is up to your discretion.

 1. Who are my subjects?

First things first, ask yourself who your subjects are or if you even have a subject. The subject/s will determine the focal point of your photo and how everything will look around it. You can elevate this question more by asking yourself if you have a major or a minor subject.

The major subject is the one you want to showcase in your photo and is basically the reason why you are taking the photo. Meanwhile, the minor subject/s are the ones around your major subject which you would like to emphasize as well.

2. What is in my frame?

Next up is to do your first look into your viewfinder and check out how things are to look should you take the photo. Through this, you can do your basic adjustments such as changing your white balance, exposure, and other technical matters.

3. What do I want to include in my frame?

After the first look, you may decide to change your subjects again and perhaps add or subtract elements. Adding and subtracting is easy when you are in complete control of your composition such as if you are in a studio.

However, should you have limited control over your surroundings like parties or festivals, you may want to do other adjustments. By other adjustments we mean that you may zoom in more, adjust your angle, change your perspective, or manipulate your depth of field.

4. Is this editable? 

Finally, this is an advanced question I ask myself only when I am feeling playful. Digital editing has allowed photographers to experiment more and do daring things. With that said, this question is something you will ask yourself only if you get an instinct of taking a risky photo.

If the answer to this question is yes, then go ahead and take that shot. But if it is a no, you probably want to play it safe and implement the answers to the other questions instead to work your way around. 

To sum it all up...

In this article we started a new section that will put us closer into achieving total freedom in photography. Instead of learning technical skills, we will be venturing into the rather subjective world of compositions. 

We learned that composition can turn your photos into a unique masterpiece or perhaps a dull unusable photo. To help us compose better photos we can ask ourselves four questions: 

1. Who are my subjects?
2. What is in my frame?
3. What do I want to include in my frame?
4. Is it editable?

For the next article of this section, we will be discussing the most well-known composition rule: the Rule of Thirds. I hope you enjoyed and learned a lot today. Don’t forget to share this article to spread the knowledge!