Photography 101: Composition

Composition has to be one of the few things that stuck with me from high school, and is now a pretty easy thing for most people to implement.

The majority of digital cameras made today come with a display screen that is broken up into nine squares. Known as the Rule of Thirds, the lines that bisect the screen are the places where you want to line up the horizon and your subject.

Horizontally this can even include things like railings, or anything else running across the screen. Whereas the vertical lines become the focus where our subject should be lined up.

The place where these bisect is your sweet spot, and for purposes of composition ideal locations for placing the emphasis of your picture.

This however could mean your subject is put out of focus because of their placement in the viewfinder, so another handy use of your shutter-release button when it’s being half suppressed is that it will also focus on the subject in the center of your screen.

By first using this auto-focus function to put your subject in focus, you can then – while still holding the button suppressed – recompose the shot so they instead line up with one of your thirds.

Because the range is preset at this point, your subject should be in focus regardless of where they end up in the picture.

The more of these you’re able to accomplish, the more atheistically pleasing the image will be. So remember to try and envision the picture you’re trying to capture.