10+ Rules and Tips about Photography Composition for Beginners
Last Updated on March 7, 2022 by Peter Wood
Composition refers to how to arrange elements and parts. As for photography composition, it means the art to compose an image within the frame. You can make a picture more attractive with the photography composition help. Well, the viewers can grasp the message and feel the emotion you want to express easily. The followings are some proven rules of composition in photography. You can compose those guidelines together flexibly while shooting.
Part 1: 10+ Useful Photography Composition Rules for Beginners
1. Follow Your Eye
When you see a picture of the crashing waves, how your eyes react to the scene? Well, most people’s eyes will move from top to bottom, and left to right. You can use the movement of the eye into photography composition too.
2. Focus on the Subject
You need to frame the image around your subject to emphasize, isolate, highlight and identify it. In another aspect, you should remove distractions from your photograph to prevent detracting. By taking way the not important things from the image, the main subject can grab more attention.
3. Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is mentioned in many photography composition blogs. Briefly, you can divide the photograph into 9 equal rectangles, which are 3 across and 3 down. Some cameras can display the overlaid grid in the live view mode already. The main foreground subject can be balanced along the lines or the position where the lines intersect.
4. Position and Viewpoint
In spite of taking pictures from the eye level, you can consider to shoot from the higher or lower place. Furthermore, you can take a photo from the side, back, close or far distance to get different compositions.
5. Foreground Interest and Depth
You can add a sense of depth to the scene to strength the point. As you know, the common photographs are 2D. You can use foreground interest in the frame to add a 3D feel. In addition, you can create depth in photography composition to show the foreground, middle ground and background. Overlapping is also a good way to emphasize the depth in a varying distance.
6. Background
A busy background cannot bring you the compact in a short time. If you don’t want to distract or detract the subject of your photograph, you can take a shot with a plain and unobtrusive background. An uncomplicated background is the principles of composition in photography. You can also crop or zoom in the certain part of the subject to show more details.
7. Frame Scene with Frame
There are many natural and artificial frames you can use, such as arches, holes, etc. You can place frames around the edge of the composition to isolate the main subject. As a result, you can get a focused image easily.
8. Balancing Elements
Just place the main subject to the center. This can be included into the photography composition rule of thirds. Your photograph will not be as weight as before. Meanwhile, you can use some less important objects to make the picture not too empty.
9. Leading Lines
Leading lines refer to paths, walls, patterns and others that can lead viewers to the main subject. But leading lines are not always in straight in the landscape photography composition, as well as other types. You can enhance the composition of your image with the leading lines in diagonal, curvy, zigzag, radial and other creative directions.
10. Rule of Odd Numbers
Have you found that an odd number of subjects in photography are more eye-catching than the even number subjects? You can use the odd photography composition guideline to make the picture look good. Well, it may not work if there are too many people in a scene, like a wedding.
11. Natural Abilities
It may not seem to be a persuasive photography composition tip. But it is true that some people have the compositional ability by talent or training. If your subconscious tells you that the composition looks good in the viewfinder, you can release the shutter to record the moment.
Part 2: How to Touch Up Your Well Composed Photograph
After composing the image with the above rules, you can use third-party photo editing software to process details. For professionals, Adobe Photoshop is a good tool to eliminate imperfections and compose different subjects. However, Photoshop is too expensive and hard for beginners. If you want to get basic retouching features, WidsMob Retoucher can meet your demands perfectly.
Despite the basic photo editing features, you can get the legendary film profiles and film grains in clicks. Moreover, you can remove noise, retouch portraits and apply artistic effects to the photos captured by your mobile phone or digital camera. In a word, you can retouch and edit photos while preserving image details with ease.
- Remove noise caused by high ISO, low light, fast shutter speed, and more.
- Analog classic film effectsto give your digital photo emotion.
- Do skin smoothingand skin whitening with the advanced photo beautifier algorithms.
- Minimize image grain, JPEG artifacts, and other imperfections.
- Apply vignetting, fisheye, color opacity, color filter, and other parameters.
Step 1: Launch WidsMob Retoucher. Drag and drop your pictures to its main interface. Then click the Next button to move on.
Step 2: Switch to the specified section to touch up a photo. You can navigate to the Portrait section to smooth and whiten skin by parameters.
Step 3: You can analog films with powerful filters in the Film Pack section. Here you can choose from various color rendition profiles, color modes, and film grains. You can click the B/A icon near the bottom to get the before and after window if necessary.
Step 4: At last, you can click the Save button or the Share button near the bottom to export the picture freely.
Part 3: Tips to Take Creative Photo Using Photography Composition Techniques
Analyze Different Types of Art
To master photograph composition skills, you need to pay attention to other classics and contemporaries. Just compare and analyze what impresses you most. What is the composition in photography? Different types of visual art can inspire you.
Be Okay to Imitate
No matter how many photocomposition examples you have seen, you need to take your photographs to practice the rules. You can start to imitate your favorite photographers at first.
Keep on Practicing
You should shoot not only the objects you like but also other boring scenes. You can use the art of composition to turn it into something interesting.
Get Feedback from Others
Share your photos with other photographers or join the photography forums. You can get the photography composition analysis and advertisements to improve your technique.