Photographic Composition
Photographic composition is one of the most important techniques to master. In this installment of our photography tips section, we will look at how to use the rules of composition and how they can give your photographs more impact and subtly influence how viewers respond to your images.
With a bit of practice, these will become instinctive; you will find yourself looking through the viewfinder in a whole new way!
Framing the Subject
One of the first differences you notice between the professionally taken boudoir photographs and ones shot by novices is how closely pros tend to crop their images.
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Most people start out by trying to include all of their subject - every bit of their hair, all of their arms and legs etc. The resulting images are usually nice - but they lack impact.
Rule of Thirds
The next thing to bear in mind is where you create the point of interest. The eye is naturally drawn to lines 1/3 of the way into the frame, so the most appealing images are often those where the point of interest is placed on one of the four points where the thirds intersect - rather than in the centre of the picture, which is often the tendency of novice photographers. |  |
Negative Space
The last rule I want to cover here relates to the proportion of the frame occupied by the subject versus the amount of empty or 'negative space'.Sometimes large amounts of negative space can have a strong visual and emotional impact on a picture.
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Experiment with how the subject relates to the space.
The most common composition is to have the subject face towards the open area. Normally the eyes are used to lead in, but as you can see in the example above, you don't have to use the eyes!
Conversely when the subject looks away, or is turned away from the space (as in the right-hand example above, the emotional response is quite different. For more information on Composition, here are some other useful links etc.