My Composing Eye

A good friend and I were in Napa Valley and decided to do a little wine tasting.  It was a quiet day at the winery and we had sparked up a conversation with the gentleman serving us.  Not being wine connoisseurs, we asked him how to recognize a good wine.  He answered very simply…”if you like how it tastes, it’s a good wine”.

I find the same thing to be true about photography.  If the picture grabs you, it’s a good picture.  What may grab me may not be what grabs you, and that’s OK.  Having said that, there are a few things I have learned over the years that help make pictures that tend to grab me a little more often than not.  Some of those techniques involve how the picture was composed.  Here’s a few things to consider in landscape photography.

Rule of Thirds

This basic concept of subject placement can be found in just about any book you read on photography.  For whatever reason, our brain seems to like pictures where the subject is offset from the center.  The offset may be left/right, or up/down.  So, dividing the frame into thirds is a good place to start as shown in the picture below.  As most books will also explain, this is not a hard-and-fast rule.  So, if you have your subject in the center and it just isn’t what you are looking for, give the rule of thirds a try.

Create a Third Dimension

I can’t express how many times I have been standing in the presence of something amazing, whipped the camera out.  The lighting was perfect and when it was all said and done and the picture was developed…”eh, that isn’t what I saw”.  Ever been there?  Quite often, the solution to making that blah picture into something that really catches my attention is creating a third dimension.  That is done by placing something in the foreground.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be something spectacular, just having the third dimension brings the image to life.

The pictures below all have the same mountain range in the background and the Tetons are spectacular in their own right.  But, having the flowers or the barn in the foreground makes the mountains appear to have more depth than in the image on the bottom lacking the third dimension.

Having the third dimension also makes your eyes walk from the foreground and through the picture.  I have always found pictures with this third dimension to be much more interesting.

Even when the background is intentionally blurred, the angle the picture was taken makes the flower appear to have a third dimension which is more pronounced than had the picture been taken straight on.

Leading Lines and Objects in Depth

As a compliment to having the third dimension, there is a concept of leading lines that tend to help direct the viewer’s eyes through the picture and guide them to the subject.  If those lines originate from or near the corners, they seem to be more effective.  While I can’t explain why, this seems to be a very effective technique.  The images below indicate what those leading lines may look like.  The rocks in the center image tend to walk you through the picture, almost as if you were hopping from one rock to the next across the stream.

Take Advantage of the Angles

Finally, if you take a picture of something straight on and it isn’t what you are looking for, try creating some angles.  Sometimes that is just the nudge needed to capture the feel you wanted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beauty of photography is having the ability to take a few “rules” or more appropriate “guidelines” and insert your creativity to get the desired effect.  All of these guidelines are things to consider when composing an image but definitely not required to make a picture that you absolutely love.  There is plenty more to learn than the few tidbits offered here.  Hope this helps getting started!

Remember to take a few moments to enjoy the time outdoors!

 

Disclaimer.  The goal of this site is to encourage others to get outdoors and experience what life has to offer.  Since photography is a central theme of this site, I thought it might be helpful to include a few tips and ideas for understanding the basics of photography.  Most of what I offer in the photo tips section is based off experience I have gained over many years of enjoying photography and experimenting with different camera settings.  This trial-and-error approach to learning photography has certainly been supplemented with tidbits of techniques gained from a variety of photography-based magazines and talking to other photographers.  While I would love to give credit to the sources, I didn’t keep the magazines and can’t remember what I learned from who.  Having said that, these tips are pretty basic and would be considered common knowledge by photographers.