Improve Your Photo Composition
Arrange Your Subject
For Maximum Impact
Photo composition provides the main interest
factor in your photographs. It is about capturing the attention of your
viewer's eye and having her be compelled to look closely at your work.
 Composition is also the
photographic element that only you can drive, which is why it is treated first in the CSE triad. Unlike sharpness and
exposure, where the camera can automatically do most of the thinking
for you, the camera cannot help you select and frame your subject.
No matter how sophisticated or simple your camera is,
you control what you will photograph and how you will compose it. You
not only select the subject, but you place the subject in the frame,
size your subject, and determine which background and foreground
elements to include to complement the subject.
Your critical eye plays a big role in this process – you
guide your eye by becoming familiar with photo composition guidelines
such as “the rule of thirds”, motion, balance, and rhythm. As you start
getting familiar with these concepts, you will begin to look at
pictures and ask key critical-eye questions.
As you look at the pictures below, try answering the
questions to their left.
 For Your Selected
Subject
 Can you easily identify the subject?
Does it stand out clearly from the
background and other picture elements? Is the subject large enough?
What if it were larger? Smaller?
Where was the picture taken from?
What if it were taken from a different angle?
What story does the picture tell?
What is the picture hiding from the viewer?
For help with these questions, go to Improve
Your Subject Selection.
 For Image Balance
Do secondary and background elements
in the picture balance the weight of the subject?
Is the subject nicely offset from
the center of the frame, or is it dead center? What would happen if it
moved toward or away from the center?
Does the subject stand out clearly
from the background and other picture elements? Is the subject large
enough in the frame?
Is the photo horizontal, vertical,
or square? How does that impact the balance of the image?
How are dark, light, and medium
tones distributed throughout the image?
For help with these questions:
 For Visual Motion
How does the arrangement of elements
in the image make your eye move? In a line? In a curve? Does your eye
move up, down, left, or right? Can you tell why?
Are there patterns or repetitive
elements? How do those help move your eye?
What does the photo composition do
to add drama?
For help with these questions, go to the Visual Motion
page.
Framing and Cropping for the Best Photo Composition
One way to improve your photographic composition, that
cuts across all three of these core considerations, is the photo crop.
You choose what to include in your picture and what to omit by your
initial framing of the picture in the viewfinder.
Then, if you use your computer to edit your photos, you
may change the composition by cutting off some of your image from the
left, right, top, or bottom. When you do this, you may change the
character of the composition considerably. So, more things to ask when
looking at a photo composition are:
What was excluded from this picture?
Can you imagine anything that may have helped the composition?
Would the image have more impact if
even more had been cropped from it's frame?
How does the shape of the frame
(horizontal, vertical, or square) impact the balance and motion in the
image?
For help with these questions, go to the Cropping Photos page and then to the Cropping Photos and Aspect Ratio page.
Now you should feel like you are starting to get control
of your photo composition, and you're ready for the next stop on the
CSE journey, sharpness. Click here to
focus (pun intended) on improving
your image sharpness.
Or, if your photos are looking sharp, but grey and washed out, go directly to the pages on photo exposure to add more punch to your images.
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