Composition In Art - Photography

Hopefully you find these photography tips in composition for beginners useful. Studying photography as a fine art at Tyler (an art school in Philadelphia, PA - part of Temple University) became synonymous with everyday life, in my thoughts, words, and actions. I was and am a unique student in my approaches to photography. It is now in my interest to share some wisdom with others.

While composing, here are some things I am always thinking about:

1. Color

a. Understanding color is a life-long venture. From my current philosophy, allowing two complimentary colors significant real estate in your photograph creates a complete element (yin-yang if you will). This completion and balance definitely attracts attention from the viewers' eye. Do you want a viewer to spend time looking at that complimentary emphasis? On the contrary, we can create a movement within the picture using color that will promote fast pace viewing and diverted attention

b. Let's create an example to consider the above options. You are photographing an apple on the street with not-so-far-away background buildings in perspective. You want the picture to be about the apple, not the city. You look both ways down the street- each offering different color background elements. Looking North, there is a red door underneath a large bright sky blue sign. South, you see another red door, but a large sign on the wall next to it is green. You want the shot to be about the apple, not cities, stores, or shopping

c. When composing, which direction would you put in the background? For suspense, Go to the bottom of this Ezine article for the answer

2. Skyless

The way I see it, our sky above is giant light source. I scoff at photographs that emphasize sky. Those pictures are like looking directly at the sun, or a flashlight, or a headlight, or a strobe! Just cut out sky in your photographs and you will start looking for compositions, which is essential to finding great ones!

3. Men's Left Standing, Women's Right Standing

a. Call me neurotic, but having more rules makes my experience of composing photographs a lot more enjoyable

b. This rule of composition has been running in my process for many years, longer than most others. I am not sure if people understand this rule after telling them. It seems really simple to me. If a man is walking, take a shot of his left side. If a woman is standing, take a shot with her right side in it. The tricky part is that this rule is reversed when individuals are seated. It is reversed again when they are in the prone position. I'll be happy if you just remember the first two parts of this rule

i. Standing Man - His Left Side Standing

ii. Standing Woman - Her Right Side

iii.Seated Man - His Right Profile or 職

iv.Seated Woman - Her Left Profile or 職

c. What is the reason? For lack of better explanation, using these rules of thumb create a consistency for me. There is nothing wrong with aiming for certain objective elements. It would be impossible to be accurate 100% of the time anyway!

4. 職 Portrait

You don't know what a 3/4 portrait is? You will soon! A 3/4 view is when the camera sees one person's eye clearly and only the eyelashes of the other. Does that make sense? Usually a person's nose will block the person's other eye less their eyelashes. In essence, their head is turned 3/4 away from the camera. Back to Composition!

5. Tone

For extreme emphasis (and what is generally considered to be a good negative) look for compositions that include both black and white materials or objects. It is common practice to set your exposure directly in the middle, but that is a different and much more complicated discussion. Are you interested in learning exposure? If your photographs intent is to be tranquil, consider reversing this rule. Find low-contrast compositions, perhaps allowing one element to extrude from background tones for pop

6. Texture

Allowing light to rake across a surface and photographing that object perpendicularly exaggerates its texture. This is desirable in most situations. Cameras like texture, not patterns

Apple Shot Answer

Following my suggested rules of composition, you should have decided to look South. Allowing a red door and green sign real estate in your photograph's background would not draw as much attention, giving the apple prominence

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