Better Photos
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Better Photos
004 Tips for Mastering Composition
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This episode dives into the art of composition, discussing seven essential techniques that can elevate your photography. From the rule of thirds to point of view, these techniques inspire creativity and help photographers capture engaging images.
• Rule of thirds promotes dynamic placements of subjects
• Leading lines guide the viewer’s gaze towards the subject
• Framing enhances depth and focus around the subject
• Negative space emphasizes subjects by minimizing distractions
• Patterns and symmetry can create captivating visuals
• Layering adds depth through foreground, middle ground, and background elements
• Point of view invites creativity through varied angles
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Hey mama, whether or not you're trying out your camera for the very first time or you've been doing this a while and just looking for some creative inspiration, I've got all that and more. I'm here to help you see your world differently, challenge you creatively and find your passion for photography. Welcome back to the Better Photos podcast. How was your week? Did you guys get any snow? Where you're at, we got just a little bit and it pretty much melted before my kids even went outside, and that just reminded me that my kids are inside kids. I love being outside.
Speaker 1:I was out there with the chickens again. If you saw my Instagram, at Be Posh Photo, I was playing with some dappled light with one of my chickens slash photo prop. So we have chickens. Yes, I am five minutes from a Starbucks, five minutes from a Target and I live beside cows and we have silky chickens, which are these furry chickens. I was at one of my friend's house and I saw this furry chicken and I was like what is that? I need one of those in my life and she it was her rooster and she told me the breed. So come to find out.
Speaker 1:Chickens are like dogs, like there's pedigrees. There is different breeds, different standards of the breed, and you have to go on this long hunt to find the standard of the breed. There are whole facebook groups and farmers that sell fertilized eggs. They'll sell you a hen, but it sometimes comes with a rooster and sometimes it is anywhere from $150 to $250, maybe more if you just want a hen, and that is because these are the hardest chickens to sex, so you don't know if they're a boy or girl without a DNA test or you just have to wait for them to crow or lay an egg. So I ended up finding some and they weren't the best quality and that means that their lifespan may not be that long. They are very finicky with all the things, but anyway. So that kind of started our love for chickens. And don't even ask me how much I've spent on those things. They say you're saving money buying eggs, but we have been spending way more than that on the coop that I made my husband build and all the things. So anyways, that is what else you can see on my Instagram, and what I'm doing in my spare time other than doing photography is I am a farmer, slash farmer-ish. Let's just say that I've got chickens, I have a garden. I would love a goat, but we also are not on a farm, so there is that, anyways.
Speaker 1:So we talked about different types of light last week, and then I also talked about this lens that I was getting, and I got it but I have not shot with it. So I am planning to do some sort of shoot where I can just practice with that. And then I also have been interested in these lens filters that you can just put on top of your lens and it does these really cool effects. So I brought one. It literally came from Amazon. I put the package in my bag and went to a first birthday shoot at a home and tried it out. I didn't know how to screw it onto my lens at that time and I didn't want to be fumbling around with it. So I you can also like hold it up in front of the lens. So it does these like really cool effects.
Speaker 1:And again, I'm like inspired by Russian photographers, like everything they do. I'm like that looks so good and so just nostalgic and romantic and like a beautiful natural, even though there is like like the mix of like great color palettes and you know, makeup, but it's like not so dramatic and I don't know. It's so beautiful and so inspiring. So that is the next thing that I'm going to try and be posting about. They have these ones that you can buy from Russia, like the exact ones that I saw on Instagram, but it takes like at least 30 days to get here. And then I had to look up like the price conversion, because it's like 9,000 rubles or whatever the Russian currency is. So that's still up in the air, but I will put the one that I got from Amazon in my show notes. If you look in the show notes, you'll find the link to my Amazon store and all the things that I've talked about in the podcast.
Speaker 1:So today we are going to be getting into one of my other favorite topics, which is composition, so stay tuned, alright, so today we are talking about composition basics. So there are so many things you can do with composition again to add variety and to just create something different than what the typical photo looks like, which is somebody standing at about a 5'5 height and shooting straight from their eyeball to the subject. So things can look very the same. A lot of people put a subject in the middle of the frame and they don't really think anything else about it. So today we're going to be talking about seven different composition techniques that photographers and artists alike think about when it comes to making better photos.
Speaker 1:All right, so the first one is the rule of thirds. So if you are on your phone, sometimes in your camera, it'll show you a grid and it looks like a tic-tac-toe board. Show you a grid and it looks like a tic-tac-toe board, and it does this in your camera too. You can set it up to be able to see the grid and what it is saying is that viewers like to see your subject at one of the intersections instead of the center. So you can do this post-processing. But it's also great to try getting in the habit of doing this occasionally for images, to make sure that it really says like specifically, like close up, that the eye of your subject is in one of those intersecting points. But obviously, if you're creating a wider image, just try placing your subject in one of those grids. This can show movement or the idea of someone's going somewhere. Put your subject on the left intersection of the grid and then leave space to the right. Doing the rule of thirds, you can add variety, you can add interest and you can, overall, tell a story with some of these composition techniques. All right.
Speaker 1:The next one is leading lines. So these are going to be lines that guide the viewer's eye right to your subject. You can use pathways, you can use fences, or you can even use furniture like cribs or couches, or you can think about road lines, you can think about old railroad tracks, window seals, stairways, bridges all of these things that have like lines. If you place your subject where they intersect with one of those lines, then it can look like that was meant to be all part of a cohesive image. So if you have like railroad tracks, you can play with that, like having the line go straight to your subject or the path going straight to your subject All of these things. You want to make sure that the lines lead right into what you want the viewer to see. So maybe you are asking your subjects to hold hands and walk down this path and looking at each other as they walk. Anything like that can be leading lines. And once you start like thinking about these, you end up doing them more naturally. So I can go back and see images where I'm like oh, like that looks good, because I did leading lines and I wasn't even like trying to do that, but in the beginning you want to like try to train your eye to see the lines so that can really help with your image. The miss, or the things that can go wrong with leading lines, is when they don't go directly to your subject. If they are like vertical lines and they're next to your subject and it's just like too disconnected, then that is where they would not come into play with your image. You want the lines to go straight into your subject in some sort of way that adds, that directs the viewer's eye to the subject. All right.
Speaker 1:Number three is framing. This one I love to do. You can use different elements around the scene to create a natural frame and put it around your subject. It will add depth, it'll add interest and this is like a fun one to do, like a scavenger hunt kind of thing for when you're out with your kids or you're in the city or even around your house. You can start looking for natural frames and some places that you can find those are doors. So having people like within a door frame, within the window frame, whether they're sitting in the window, whether they're looking out the window, whether you're on the outside of the house and looking in the window. All of those are frames. Look for different shapes.
Speaker 1:If you find like a mural or something that has like a solid area, then that could be a frame to put your subject in sidewalk lines, like if you have your subject laying down. Or archways, like there's this like fun archway in the mountains that you can place people under and that becomes like a frame. Even in people's houses. I love seeing that like when you're far away and you see like the arch of, like their walls and then the family's like in there. You can kind of use that as a frame also for newborns. I'll use like a Moses basket and put the baby in there and then that kind of makes a frame. Or shooting between the crib slats, that can make a frame. Or sometimes I make my own frames so I will lay a newborn down and I will put florals around them and make that a frame. So or I can even be literal with it and I've done like a picture frame, so a frame within a frame. So a miss with using this is too many distracting elements. So if there's like so much going on within a photo, like if I do the flat lays like with a baby and do the florals around. If I do too wide of a shot and there's like part of the rocker in it and part of the toy bin and part of a book and my feet that always end up getting in the shot, then that is like too distracting and it's going to lose focus from the frame around the baby. So you just want to be aware of, like, the extra things that are around the frame. Are they taking away from the image or are they adding to it?
Speaker 1:Number four is negative space. So this is basically like blank space to leave around your subject that you can leave in the photo so that it really emphasizes your subject. So you're going to look for blank or less busy areas to leave in your photo on purpose to emphasize your subject. This can be solid walls with no artwork, no stuff hanging in your house, like sometimes people are worried about they just moved into a new house and I'm like no, I love that, I love a blank wall. Give me a blank wall. Then that can look like such a clean image when you have your subject just in front of a plain, blank wall, rather than like a wall full of pictures and frames or art. Another thing is like the side of a building just making sure it has no windows or doors or anything like that Laying on a solid color blanket I always bring a blanket to a session, so then if I shoot above, then that can be negative space.
Speaker 1:You can also use um a backdrop stand and have like a solid color backdrop those I also linked in my Amazon shop of what I use for that Um. You can also use um the sky as negative space If you shoot up at your subject and kind of leave them in the bottom of that frame and then the sky takes up the rest of the space around them. So those are just some ideas for finding negative space that will just make your subject pop. The miss with this, or what could go wrong, is if you have too much negative space and the subject is lost in it, and so that means that the subject is too small, too far away. There's just like too much negative space where your eye is focusing on that and not the subject and not the subject. So you got to have like a good balance, okay.
Speaker 1:The next one is patterns and symmetry. So looking for repeating patterns or also creating like a balance on either side of the frame. Disrupting the pattern can draw the viewer in. So you're going to look for things that repeat. This could be windows, this could be stairs, this could be trees that are all lined up. This could be toys on the ground, like. Say, there's like Legos, like, or blocks or something that are like in a repeating pattern, and then all of a sudden there's a kid's hand that is setting out a block. Well, that is interrupting the pattern and your eye goes to the hand that's putting the block down, or maybe your child is sitting there, maybe there's like a lot of toys out and it leads to the kid or the similar pattern of things, other things with patterns that can draw in. The subject is like a rug that has a pattern and then placing your baby like in the center of that rug. If it has like medallions or things that are, you know, coming out of it or things that are being repeated or things that are being repeated, then you can do that With symmetry. It can also be like if two parents have a child in between them and they're holding hands and walking. Then that creates like a balance on either side, also with patterns.
Speaker 1:This is where my outfit choices come into play. When I'm trying to help style my clients is that I don't want to worry so much about it, the patterns clashing with the background. So most of the time I want my clients in neutrals, lighter neutrals, because that will bounce off the busy background. If they are wearing busy clothes or bold colors and then we happen to be in front of a background of a bunch of leaves or trees, that it's just like very busy back there and then they're wearing busy colors, then it just is too distracting for the viewer's eye. So the more simplified I can make their outfits, the more they're going to stand out against the busy background. Now, if I have control over the background and I can say, okay, we're going to have a solid background, you wear your busy pattern clothes or whatever, then that would be an opportunity to wear those more bold things.
Speaker 1:For me I just like to keep it simple things. But for me I just like to keep it like simple. If you can just wear lighter neutrals, that is ideal for me, because then it'll always look cohesive to the rest of my stuff that I post and it'll ultimately draw the viewer's eye into you as the family or the subject based on wearing, mess up the mood that I'm going for, which, like, I want like calm, romantic, just again nostalgic, kind of soft vibes, I guess. And if you mix a bold pattern with that, that just throws off the mood that I'm trying to convey completely, and so you can mess up your image by having like a bold pattern, or even like a modern bold pattern, in the background of like a tender baby, because you're trying to convey this like sweet, tender baby, and then you have this loud pattern in the background and so it can be just not the most cohesive image when you're just playing with the viewer's eye. I guess, again, things that with symmetry you can also do parents on either side of the crib and the baby in the middle of the crib, things like that either side of the crib and the baby in the middle of the crib, things like that. But then you can also balance things out with things in the room or just making sure that it's not like nothing on one side and then too much stuff on the other side, and just kind of scroll through Instagram or your favorite photographers and see, like, what do you notice about their composition that you like or that you don't like, or even, on your own, give your own self a critique with the, the compositions that we're talking about today, and just see where could you do a little bit better or what. What made that one be a little off? All right, so now we are going to talk about number six, layering, and so we'll talk about this a little more when we get to storytelling, which is next week.
Speaker 1:But this is adding depth by having a foreground, a middle ground and a background, a middle ground and a background. So, whatever image you're doing, maybe you can incorporate something in the foreground, like up close to your lens, and then something in the middle ground and something in the background. So the thing in the middle ground could be the thing in focus, and maybe the thing in the foreground is the thing that's out of focus and the background. So an example of this would be people in the foreground, maybe like a dad and mom, and then maybe a child that's just learning to walk is coming towards them, and they're the ones in focus. And then there's the house in the background that's blurred, or a sunset or something like that, or maybe the grass or some flowers or something in the foreground with the family on the blanket that's in focus and then the background is blurred. Or again you could have like a family all set up and they're all running towards you at different speeds and maybe the little ones are in the front and so they're going to get a little closer to you and so you'll have a natural progression of foreground, middle ground and background with the people.
Speaker 1:A miss for this would be if the foreground takes away from the subject or it doesn't play into the story or it blocks the subject completely. So before I sharpen my skills with my focusing, I've had ones where, like it got the foreground, like the grass and stuff, in focus, but totally missed the focus of my subject, which was in the middle ground, and it was a great like cute picture and I'm like I can't really do anything with this because I don't want this foliage to take away from the moment that we all want to see. That's now blurred in the middle ground. So that is where it can go. Wrong is when you're the thing that you want in focus is not and other things are. But you can obviously play around with all of this and just see what you like best, all right.
Speaker 1:So our last composition technique is point of view and thinking how this can play into your composition. Um, so you're thinking of different vantage points. So I like to tell people, like, pretend like you're an ant looking up or you're a bird looking down, or you're making your subjects look smaller or larger, like depending on how close you are to them or how far away. I don't know if you've seen the pictures that like, if you hold your fingers like a certain distance from your lens, and then there's something like like enormous in the background and it can look like you're holding it, just by the perception that you're giving. Um, that's kind of like what we're talking here, not just for that creative um aspect, but just like what could you make? Look smaller and larger, um, in your image. Um, maybe you're getting on the floor with your baby. In your image, maybe you're getting on the floor with your baby Again, we're trying not to do that typical five, five shot at your subject Maybe you're getting down on the floor with your baby or toddler. Maybe you tape your phone to the ceiling. I've seen this. My ceilings are a little too tall so getting up there would be a challenge, but in some rooms, like my kids' rooms, then maybe that could be something that would be an option and then, using just a remote timer to set off the shutter, you can also get closer to the camera we talked about and also get closer to the camera we talked about.
Speaker 1:Other things that I like to ask is like what can I peer through? And this adds an element to the viewer that makes them like think, like how did this happen? Like what is that? What are we looking through? Like it just intrigues them and helps them to linger a little longer at the image, intrigues them and helps them to linger a little longer at the image. But also, like I love again, like I stated, I think, like last episode or one before, I like to feel like you're peeking in on someone's life and you're capturing a moment, and so this provides, like the viewer, just like getting a little glimpse. So maybe the door is like halfway shut and you're just like peeking in on this family reading a book to their child or your toddler reading a book to the baby, or you know something like that, something where you're like peeking in or like what can I peer through? Maybe you're peering through the coffee mugs handle that was sitting there since this morning and it might still be full and cold now but you're peering in at the mom that's taking care of the child or something like that that can also add into storytelling. But just just thinking in your mind like how can I make this difference than just standing here shooting straight on Misses that happen with this is you don't want to get a distorted, like 0.5 image. If you've seen that like where you put it on 0.5 and go up to somebody's forehead and take that picture and it looks like so distorted, I mean it's so unflattering if you've had any of your kids do that to you. So again, don't take pictures that are like really close to your baby's forehead or your subject's forehead and then making their like the rest of their body look like really small or distorted, and so just being careful of that.
Speaker 1:Another thing I want to mention is cropping. Like when you're photographing a subject, never crop them at their joints, so you don't want to crop them at their wrist or their elbows or their knees or their ankles. That is not not a good look. It just cuts off your image and it I don't it just like, makes it not complete in a person's brain. Um, people like I don't know. There's like all this like psychological stuff of what people's brains do when they look at images, um, and so there's things that people don't like and then there's things that you know don't stimulate the brain in that way, I guess.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if you have a problem, this is me okay. So I have a problem getting my images straight. So when I go to post-process them, I straighten all my images and sometimes this can lead to cropping at the joints, like the feet, feet or the ankles or the wrist or something else. So if you are like me, or if you just want to be careful and just in case, then pull away from the subject a little bit and allow yourself some room to crop later. I try to do, you know, get that best image so that I have less to do on my computer later. But I'm just not great with straight. I have the like leveler in my camera and I don't know. I'm just like working too quick or whatever, and AI is not that good yet to add in the hands or feedback of your subjects. So that's just something to throw in there.
Speaker 1:When you're thinking of composition and this the point of view, is also like a storytelling technique which, again, I said I will talk about next week when we get into fun things to incorporate, to add to our toolbox of things that can really help tell a story. So if you have questions, anything like that, then just drop me a message in my instagram dms at be posh photo, or if you've taken any pictures that go along with these episodes, make sure to hashtag Better Photos Podcast and I will take a look and I have added links to my backdrops, my ladder, my drone things that can help you when you are trying to get better photos, all in my show notes. So go down there and take a look. You can also find my links to booking sessions and my Instagram feed. So now for our challenge.
Speaker 1:This week you're going to take two photos for each composition technique. So again, we have rule of thirds, leading lines, framing, negative space, patterns and symmetry layering, which is the foreground, middle ground, background and point of view, and so if you can take two pictures of each of those and just experiment and see what you like best, then hashtag better photos podcast if you post those and we will catch up next week. So hopefully these things can just help you with your shooting and looking for specific things to capture or inspire you to be more creative, and ultimately, this will leverage your photography skills, so you'll have new things in your camera roll. Feel free to share your progress with me and I'm so excited to talk next time. All right, you guys have a great week. Thanks for joining.