Update 8/24/2020: I had a writer for another photography blog reach out to me, and he has a post with some excellent additional reading on composition. Check out that post here!

When you read the word “composition,” what comes to mind? If you’re anything like me, you probably have a mental image of a landscape scene with a tic-tac-toe grid or a golden ratio spiral overlaid.

Composition is one of the most frequently taught concepts in photography, and it’s frequently taught in a manner that is so oversimplified that it does more harm than good. I’ll pick on the Rule of Thirds for a minute. It’s the first thing any new photographer gets taught about composition, and all too often it’s the only thing they ever retain: “Don’t put your subject in the center, that’s boring! Put it on an intersection of two thirds lines instead!” And then it sticks, and every single photo that photographer takes for the rest of eternity looks the same.

If we look at the word “compose” for a minute, we realize it’s used in non-photographic contexts as well. A musical composer I really like is Bach. What if Bach’s first music teacher told him, “Oh, yeah, don’t use whole notes. They’re so boring. Instead, use 8th notes.” The Rule of 8th Notes would probably be a step in the right direction for our dear Johann if he was writing fugue after fugue with nothing but whole notes. But does that make the Rule of 8th Notes a good universal compositional technique in music? Of course not. Nobody tell Miley Cyrus though, it’s funnier if we’re all in on the joke and she’s not.

Just like sometimes using whole notes is a good idea, it can totally be a good idea to center your subject in the frame. The trick is knowing when.

I’d like to throw out the idea of compositional “rules” in general. They are, on a fundamental level, an extremely limiting and flawed conception of how to compose a photo. A rule implies that there are things that should always or never be done, and that’s simply not true in photography.

To compose is to bring together multiple elements into a cohesive whole. To compose well is to put together the elements in such a way that they communicate something intentionally. A big part of composition is knowing where to point the camera and where to stand so that elements in your photo end up in the right location in your frame.  But did you know that paying attention to how dark or bright something is, how blurry or in focus something is, or the relative sizes of things are all part of your composition as well? That’s right, changing your shutter speed or aperture can have just as big of an effect on your composition as taking 20 steps to the left, or zooming way in.

I want to present here a few compositional principles that are useful to keep in mind while you’re making decisions about how to capture your photo. These ideas have their roots in patterns psychologists have noticed about the way humans observe things visually. If you have some idea what you’re trying to communicate with your photo before you take it, you can use these principles to more effectively get your message across.

Bright areas and contrast draw the eye. If you’re taking a picture of a cool gray boulder, but in the background of the photo you have a ton of branches and twigs silhouetted against the sky, your average viewer is going to get real distracted by those, and probably not spend much time looking at your gray rock. The sky is bright, and its contrast with the dark silhouetted branches physically demands the viewer’s attention. If it’s important that a certain part of your photo is the first thing that gets looked at, then make sure you have contrast and/or brightness to draw the eye to that area of the frame. If you don’t have a specific part of the photo that needs to be seen first, you should still be aware of any bright or contrasty areas in the frame that might be drawing eyes away from where you want them.

We follow visual lines. You’re probably heard of leading lines before. They’re a great way to improve (or ruin) a photo. If your line leads from the bottom of the photo to the right edge and then gets cut off, guess where your viewer’s eyes will go? From the bottom to the right, and then out of the frame. Hopefully you didn’t have anything important in the top left corner, because it’s going to be ignored or missed entirely. If you are going to include a leading line of any kind in your framing, it’s important to be aware of where that line leads to… or doesn’t. It can lead nowhere, or it can lead out of the frame. That’s up to you. If you have a reason you want your viewer’s eyes to exit the frame at a certain place, this is a great way to get there. If you have a detail in the photo or an element that is very important, having a line that leads to it is a very effective way to get the viewer to look at it.

Visually balanced photos are comfortable to look at. Visually imbalanced photos make people feel antsy. Sometimes you might want your viewer to feel antsy. If you have a big, heavy element on the left side of the frame, but you want the photo to be peaceful, it’s a good idea to balance it out by including something on the right side of the photo as well. You have more leeway than you probably think (don’t assume you always need two matching elements on either side of the frame). Interestingly, top/bottom balance is usually less important for the viewer’s sense of comfort than left/right balance.

One element of composition that is easily overlooked is time. This is difficult to describe, but even in a still photo that represents 1/500th of a second of time or what have you, every photo will include a sense of time. Motion blur on a slow moving object can offer a sense of time passing. Crisply-rendered details in a fast-moving object can really emphasize the “instantaneous”-ness of the moment. In the photo below, there are tracks in the snow leading down the path, and a dark rock sitting on top of them. It’s obvious that the rock came after the tracks, because the tracks don’t trace around the obstacle. That is actually part of the meaning this photo has for me - the rock is in my way, but it wasn’t in the way of the people who walked here before me.

Cluttered photos overwhelm and quickly disengage your viewer. The reason photography teachers often urge to simplify, simplify, simplify compositions is because when we look at a cluttery photo with way too much going on, our brain quickly gives up on trying to make order from chaos, and the photo just becomes disinteresting. That’s not to say that photos can’t have a lot of elements, but to present a lot of elements in a photo without making it feel cluttered is really hard to do. In fact, I’d argue it’s one of the things that separates really good fine art photographers from Joe Schmoe hobbyists.

Go find a photo you really like - one you took yourself or one from a photographer you respect. Chances are, the composition of that photo appealed to you on a subconscious level. Pick it apart. Where are your eyes drawn to? Why? What path do your eyes take through the photo? Is it comfortable to look at? Or is it uncomfortable in a way you think just works? Does the photo feel like you’ve been there for a while, or you are looking at a moment that could be missed in the blink of an eye? Are there a ton of elements in the photo or only a few?

More than anything else I’ve found in the photographic learning process, composition is a game of practice. Practice, practice, practice, and pay really close attention to what you’re doing when you set up each shot. Mindlessly clicking won’t get you there.