5 Tips for Better Composition in your Photos
Composition is one of the most important aspects of photography, as it determines how your viewers perceive and engage with your images. It refers to the way in which elements in a photograph are arranged and framed. It ranges from choosing a point of view, determining the placement of subjects, selecting a focal point, and deciding on the overall structure of the image. Essentially, composition is a very important piece to any great photo. So let’s go ahead and jump right in starting with the first technique.
Framing - This is probably one technique you’ve heard of before, but personally, I love using frames in my photos. You’re able to bring more attention to your subject by putting them in a “frame”. It gets more interesting the more creative you’re able to be, which for this technique, is endless because essentially, your environment is your playground.
Adding depth to your photos (via lighting and foreground, background) - When we view a scene with our own two eyes, we see it in 3D. However, our cameras do not. They produce 2D images. That’s why when we take certain shots, they appear “flat” and don’t have that pop to them that you might’ve seen when you were on scene. What can we do then if our cameras capture scenes in 2D? Well, we have to use techniques to add the “3D” element into our photos. And we can do that by creating depth in our images. There are a handful of techniques we can use to do that. One way to do that is with lighting. The way light hits our scene can drastically change how it looks when we take the shot. There are 3 types of lighting: Front lighting, side lighting, and back lighting. Frontal lighting results in a flat picture so we won’t be talking about that. Instead, let’s focus on side lighting and back lighting. Side lighting is my favorite to use to show depth as you can really see the details of your subject due to the uneven-ness of the light hitting your subject, adding contrast and in general, is very pleasing to look at. (Show example of picture with side lighting and describe where the lighting is coming from and how it creates depth). With backlighting, we take side-lighting to the next level and introduce even more contrast to the picture since the camera is pointed more into the light source’s direction.
Using foreground - Another way to create depth is using foreground elements. This allows your photo to appear more 3D by adding layers to your image rather than just being flat. The different layers go as such: foreground being the closest, middleground being the middle area, and background being whatever backdrop is in your image.
Subject Seperation - When taking photos, we typically have a subject in mind, but the more busier your scene is, the more easily we can confuse our viewers. Their eyes might go around the picture instead of the most important part and main focus of your photo. We don’t want that. One way we can do that is ensuring our subject is seperated from the background. There are many ways to do this, but I’ll only be discussing this method. For this method, we place our subject in areas that easily seperates it from the background which will make it easier for it to stand out amongst all the other elements in our photo. We want our subject to be noticeable very quickly. But this doesn’t just stop at subject seperation. This can go for other important elements in your photo.
Shooting Telephoto - I talked about my 55 mm 1.8 lens in my other post and I mentioned how it’s one of my favorite lenses to use, which btw, check that out if you haven’t! With a 50 mm lens, you’re able to comfortable get candid shots from a distance where you don’t have to be right in the action. This can be great for anyone who isn’t quite comfortable getting close to their subjects quite yet. Though another big reason why I like shooting street with telephoto lens is the compression you can get in your shots. For those who aren’t sure what I mean by compression, it’s the compression of the scene, making the background, midground, and foreground appear much closer together than they actually are. The higher the focal length, the more compression you get in your shots, which brings me to another focal length I love shooting with, the 85 mm. I love how different of a look at you can get with an 85 mm vs. other focal lengths since it’s not a very common focal length for street photography so that automatically makes your work stand out. But even when using such tight focal lengths. I still like to capture the scenery and area I’m in and use that as a backdrop or just to add context and story to the photo. This might be a bit troublesome since telephoto lens like the 85 mm can be very tight so you’ll definitely have to back up quite a bit, but I love getting these types of shots as well as the challenge that comes with it.
Hopefully with these 5 tips, you can go out and start getting creative with your environment and seeing improvements in your photography. There are tons of more techniques and skills you can learn so I would highly recommend you go out there and search for those other tools so you can have more in your bag to express what you want in your photography. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave me a message below!
For some further explanation and examples of each technique, refer to the video below!