Lightly Toasted

With the advent of digital cameras and it being so readily available, the process of taking photos has definitely boosted. We live in a time when mobile phones, PDAs and even watches have cameras built in. But what seems sadly lacking often is the art of taking good(subjective I know) photos. This is why I thought of writing about a few basic tips on composing good photos. I will keep them simple and easy to understand and write about basic photo frame composition, also known as selecting your frame. Please bear in mind the following point are merely a guideline, you may not agree with them fully. In fact as you grow in your photography skill you’ll possibly move on to adopt a few more challenging ideas.

Good Photo Composition tips

1. Try and keep only one centre of Interest — having too many interest points in a photo distract the eyes and viewer looses focus and interest eventually.
2. Use the ‘rule of the 3^rd‘ — never focus your subject spot on in the cetre of your frame. N-E-V-E-R. The rule of the third is you divide your view-finder visually into a grid of 3×3 and try and place your subject in the 1/3^rd grids — view the above photo. Notice how the house(subject) is at the 1/3^rd point. This is merely a simple example.
3. For shooting portraits keep the eyes of the subject around the 1/3^rd grid line.
4. Less is more — use less of distraction, define what your subject is and do away with what you don’t need.
5. Focus on subject colour — Subjects cloth colours shouldn’t compete with the subject for attention — If you are shooting too many colour in the frame identify whats needs more attention and what doesn’t.
6. Align your subject angle with the lens
7. Use lines either straight or curved to lead towards the centre of interest.
8. Avoid keeping point of interest around the frame edge — this would lead the viewers eyes out of the frame

Hope you found this handy! The above photo was around Yolla (Tasmania, Australia) on the way to Cradle mountains from Wynward.