Composing Your Shots

Composition is the art of arranging the various elements of a scene in a pleasing way within the image space of a photo. This can be achieved by physically moving those elements around (either by hand, or by asking nicely when shooting a portrait!), or by moving the camera relative to those elements (Altering the focal length of the lens you use is a third option). Composition is a large part of making a successful photo. It is all very well creating a technically perfect image, but if it is not interesting visually or emotionally engaging then it is arguably a failure. In this lesson we will cover the basics of composition, looking at some of the ‘rules’, but also why you should sometimes ignore those rules.