More....photography composition rules

In this post, I will share more about the general photography composition rules. FIVE more rules will be described such as background, viewpoint, depth, framing and cropping.

Choosing a right BACKGROUND is important for portrait photography. Look for simple background such as brick wall, green grasses, bright or dark background etc. If you do not have the luxury to choose the background, then increase the distance between your subject and the background, use lens with longer focal length (at least 50mm) and open up the aperture to the maximum (smallest f-value), this will create blur background. Thus, your subject will stand out.

Dark background, 50 mm, f1.8

Think from where you will shoot before photographing your subject. Try viewpoints that are less common, be different. If the VIEWPOINT is common such as at eye level, then your photo will look common too. Try from high above, down at ground, from the side, from far away, from very close and so on.

Viewpoint down at ground, foreground - dry leaves, middle ground - the building
and background - cloud

Create DEPTH by including object at foreground, middle ground and background. These elements will make the eyes evaluating the distance between the foreground to the background, which will give the sense of depth. This is important for landscape photography. Without these three elements, your photo will look flat.

The surrounding is full with natural FRAMES, such as holes, archways and trees. Put your subject within this frames, this will isolate your subject from other elements near to the main subject. With these natural frames, our eyes will naturally focus to the main subject of interest.

Ruins of St Andrew Cathedral, framing method

CROPPING is usually required if the subject is relatively small compared to the size of photo or your photo is very busy with secondary subjects. By cropping tight around the main subject, the background interruption will be minimised, BUT you will also loss some of the pixels. Good luck!

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