5 Compositional Techniques That Will Improve Your Photography

Composition is the backbone of the arts, so having a wide and varied arsenal of compositions can revolutionize how you shoot, as well as the quality of your shots.

I can imagine composition is somewhat of a nightmare to learn about at first, but I can only vaguely remember. The two takeaway points that resonated with me were the rule of thirds and foreground interest. When I read discussions between veteran photographers, most things focused on those two criteria and if an image fit them.

Then I started to learn about more complicated and unusual compositional style, starting with breaking the rules and negative space, and for me, firmly terminating at the Fibonacci spiral which seemed to my naive eye to be able to be overlaid on just about anything. Well, now my eye is far more refined, and my stance hasn't moved! However, somewhere between the two polar extremes lay a variety of useful and memorable perspectives for your images. Great composition can easily turn an average image into something special. Equally, a lack of thought for composition can ruin something that would otherwise have been much stronger.

Have you taken shots using any of these compositional techniques?

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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