A Masterclass in Photo Composition

Joe Cornish is one of the UK's most renowned landscape photographers and a master of his craft. The way he approaches composition makes his photos stand out. In this YouTube video, Alex Nail looks over Joe's shoulder as he shares his technical and creative process.

I've been following Alex's YouTube channel for a few years. What I like the most about his videos is the time he takes to share why particular compositional arrangements work while others don't.

In this video, though, it's not only Alex sharing his expertise. Here, you can learn from Joe Cornish as he shares his approach to composing a beautiful photo in Scotland's Fisherfield Wilderness. You will learn about the importance of a level camera and how Joe uses the integrated camera movements of his Phase One system to achieve a certain perspective without having to tilt the camera.

He then continues to share how he uses light and color and how a Polarizer and a GND filter help improve the image he's taking. Polarizers can be problematic, especially when shooting with a wide angle lens under a clear sky. But in this case, the cloud cover hides the negative effects, so Joe can get away with using it to give the sky move contrast.

How to deal with complex scenes and pleasingly compose them is another topic of the video. Alex also shares his thoughts about it at the end of the video when he further dissects the composition of the final photo. So, it's worth sticking around until then.

Michael Breitung's picture

Michael Breitung is a freelance landscape and travel photographer from Germany. In the past 10 years he visited close to 30 countries to build his high quality portfolio and hone his skills as a photographer. He also has a growing Youtube channel, in which he shares the behind the scenes of his travels as well as his knowledge about photo editing.

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1 Comment

thank you. this was quite interesting to follow along.