In my recent poll, 22% of you said you’d like to see more photography tips on A Dog A Day. Every now and then I’ll try to bring you a short article on something I think is worth sharing. If you have any particular requests, please leave me a comment.

I thought I would use today’s photo to demonstrate some of the really simple ‘rules’ that I use to get great composition in my images. In order to tell a story, I believe the most important element of photography is the composition.

There were two images in this series and I really liked both of them. I’ll use them both to show you how two seconds can change the entire feel of an image, but firstly, lets talk about a few simple rules you can use to improve your photographic composition.

The Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds means that the frame can be divided into three horizontal sections and three vertical sections. Where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect makes an ideal location for the more important parts of your picture.  By locating your main subject at one of the four intersections you give the subject more emphasis than if it was right in the middle of the picture. Even if you have more than one important subject, the intersections can still work.

You never want to leave your viewer in any doubt as to the subject of your image. If they have to look long and hard at your picture to work out what the image is of, you’ve missed the opportunity of connecting with the viewer. Therefore, isolating the subject and making it obvious is extremely important.

In this photo, the dog’s face and the man’s mouth are located very close to two of the junctions. This ensures that our eye is most easily drawn to these two elements. The main subject of this image is quite clearly the dog watching the man’s hand.  

Framing 

While you want to make it very clear what the subject of your photo is, you can use the surroundings in your image to add more meaning to your subject.  The surroundings could be anything from trees to door frames or in this case, the people around the subject.

In the process of doing this you must maintain the focus on the subject, not the frame. You could use your depth-of-field to throw unimportant elements out of focus.  It also doesn’t hurt for the framing to be darker than your subject, because your eye is naturally drawn to the brighter areas. 

Drawing the viewer’s eye through the photo 

Once you have the viewers attention firmly fixed upon the subject, it’s great to be able to lead them around the image so they take it all in. Often this can be done with leading lines such as a path, fence or a row of telephone poles. When you are dealing with living things (like people and dogs) usually it is the eyes of the subjects that take us on this journey. Compare these two photos, taken seconds apart. The first has most of the eyes looking out of the frame to the right. The eye is drawn out of the frame at the top-right. The second shot, taken only seconds later has the girl on the right looking back into the frame. This seemingly small change has really strengthened the image and ensures that the viewers eye stays in the frame.

Having explained a couple of these rules to you, try to study images that you like and work out how the photographer has used these rules in their composition. If you are a new photographer, try experimenting to see what you come up with. However, now that you know them, always remember that rules were made to be broken.  Have Fun!!