Photography - Composition

I recently taught some photography classes, and having to talk about composition to them really helped me to solidify what I wanted to talk about here on this blog for that portion.

The Rule of Thirds - VERY important!

On your image/viewfinder think of cutting the image into thirds - left, center, right. Putting your subject to the left third or the right third is the strongest composition. If you take those thirds, then think of top, center, and bottom thirds as well...then where those sets of lines cross you have 4 points. Those points are the strongest "points of interest" in your photograph. Having the action on one of those points makes it more "interesting" to look at.

Landscapes should always have 2/3 land and 1/3 sky OR 1/3 land and 2/3 sky - NEVER go for half sky and half land. ;)


Cheesy smiles are not always the best! Eyes are the window to the soul, so play that up in photos featuring a child. Serious looks and big eyes create drama in photos as well. I love a serious wide-eyed child. When shooting for this, fill the frame FULL of the child’s face, or as close as your camera will allow you to get and still focus. I would suggest going to the farthest focal length of your camera to do this as well. If you are shooting with the 70-200 lens, go to the full 200 and fill the frame up. It will help keep you from having distorted images in the facial features.

Pay attention to the background! Busy backgrounds are distracting, and it's so easy to just pay attention to finding a "clean" background to shoot against. This means that toys, laundry, etc. should ideally be picked up in the room before you shoot photos in your living room. Or if you are outdoors, watch to make sure cars, people, etc. are not in the background. Watch for things “growing” out of heads like tree limbs, or telephone poles, or mailboxes, or....


Don’t always center things – off center, tilted, etc. make for some interesting images, and unique creative looks as well.

Angles of photographing

On the same level = real life look
Shot from above = innocents and pure looks
Show from below = strong, dominant looks


Objects, like trees, flags, flowers, etc. can become more interesting through the use of interesting, odd, and imaginative angles.


For me, this is actually a VERY hard topic to cover because it's so subjective. It's all artistic in nature, and not the technical. What I like might not be what you like. So, really, experiment and see what strikes you as something you like.