Compositional Thoughts
This is a quick bulleted list of my thoughts on composition. Stuff that goes on inside my head or I have found helpful over the years. They’re not hard and fast rules. I may blatantly go ahead and break them myself the next time I go out. As I think of others, I will periodically revisit this list and add to it.
If you are just starting out, unabashedly become a copycat. Learn from the work of other photographers. I used to save example images of a location to my phone, head to those locations, and try to take the same exact composition. And I mean the exact same. I’d walk in a circle like a crazy man trying to find the invisible traces of this person’s tripod. It helped me move around more until I could see what they saw and come up with reasons why they were standing there. I learned quite a bit from my circling.
Consider the edges of your frame. It doesn’t matter if it’s an intimate or grand vista. I don’t like to cut things off in weird places. To me, incomplete objects are distracting. It’s a bit like setting the boundaries of your canvas. If you were drawing or painting, I can’t imagine you would decide to cut off a flower petal. You’re drawing the whole thing. A lot of times this has prevented me from setting up for an okay shot to forcing me to explore more until I find that composition I fall in love with.
Embrace landscapes that are challenging. Simplify them. Separate as many elements as possible. When I’m trying to nail something down, I’m usually moving back and forth, up and down, and bobbing and weaving to get as much separation between the most important elements as I can. If somebody’s watching, I clearly must look mental. If you’re already at this stage, I bet you’ve already found or are close to your composition. All you have to do is fine tune it. And maybe take a breathe and slow down.
To add to the point above about simplification, I like to think of all this as layering a cake. You generally wouldn’t want one layer to bleed into another and be all messy. There’s definition. Keep each subject in it’s own layer if you will. For example, when shooting wildflowers in an alpine lake setting, I position myself to have the mountain peaks, lake, and flowers to stand on their own. I don’t want one overlapping the other.
What is important to you? Eliminate distracting elements and accentuate the essential elements of your photograph. I will zoom in and out and back in until the image I want to present feels complete, excluding elements that don’t add anything. As a side note: if there are small distractions that you know that you can easily remove in post-processing, leave them in, don’t worry about them, and take them out in post.
I don’t ever claim to be the first one out there to take the photos I take. After refining my composition, I sometimes can feel myself placing my tripod feet into the grooves of others before me. I treat it as an honor. Great minds think alike.
It is often quite simple: A great image is made up of light and angles. And usually a large dash of patience.
Move. Back in the day, I used to shoot with a 50 mm lens. It taught me that if I wanted to zoom in or out, I needed use my sneaker zoom. Lesson learned and I still use that hidden zoom feature to this day.
My main subject in the background, such as a mountain peak, can often be obvious. From there, I’m looking around or wandering thinking about nothing when I find something interesting right in front of me. Then it’s a matter of going back to the layering of objects as discussed further above.
I used to pay attention to the rule-of-thirds because that always seemed like a big one when I took photography in high school. Now I rarely consider it or maybe it’s completely ingrained. Not sure which one. Regardless, I often, and I mean really often, like to center my main subjects. Or at least my main background subject. It’s my default anchor. That certainly doesn’t jive with the rule. Bottom line, do what you enjoy and that which makes you feel best. That’s how you find your own creative vision.
Explore. I have a whole article written about this topic here. If you’re thirsty for compelling compositions, I have often followed the path of water to great sucess. Or get high. When in doubt, I climb stuff.
I love lines. I actively look for them and have them come out of the corners, curve, and lead into the main subject(s) in the image. I’ll take them coming out of the bottom dead center of the frame.
Take chances. I can’t stress this enough. While in the field, you may take an image that seems like a throwaway and then later it becomes your favorite frame of the day. Something like high altitude hiking can certainly alter your perceptions.
On the other hand, if it’s not there, feels uninspired or forced, sometimes you need to put the camera down. Taking a break can often lead to a fresh perspective at a later time.