One of the most important things a photographer can carry in their bag is a firm understanding of the basic elements of photography. A photograph is not simply the visual record of something that happened, but is actually the result of thousands of tiny variables all coming together at exactly the same time in a very specific way, never to be repeated again. Understanding these elements and how to use them is critical to any photographer that wishes to improve the quality of their work. One of the most important of these elements is composition.

What is Composition?

Put simply, composition is the way in which the subjects of your photograph interact with one another. You can think of this primarily in terms of where each object in a photograph shows up in the frame, however composition can be expanded on to reference things such as focus, depth of field, and zoom.

When a picture has great composition it tells a clear story but when the composition is bad, the picture becomes less appealing. If you've ever seen a photograph that seemed "good" but boring, it is likely that bad composition was the cause.

Elements of Composition

Once you learn how to use these helpful rules of composition, you can get amazing results. While these rules are by no means concrete and in photography breaking rules is often more fun than following them, they should serve to give you a baseline for understanding composition's impact on your shoots.

The Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is based on the artistic assumption that humans are naturally inclined to look at the point of an image that falls about two-thirds up from the bottom. If you imagine a photograph cut into nine equal squares, your subject should fall as close to one of their intersections as possible. Whenever you shoot, imagine these lines across your frame and try and line the shots up accordingly (horizons especially show great results).

Balancing Your Image

While this isn't an official "rule," it is still a helpful thing to keep in mind when shooting. Position your subjects off center and use the rule of thirds but be careful of having too much space around the subject. Try to balance the important parts of an image with the less important parts like having the subject running to a destination instead of just a picture of the subject.

The Power of Lines

There is something about patterns of lines that naturally draws our eyes. We are constantly tracing images with our minds, and you can use this to your advantage. Before shooting, look for opportunities where there are lines and see if the lines lead to anything important in your image. If the lines don't do that, the viewer's eyes will trace the lines only to be left unsatisfied that the lines lead to nowhere.

The Power of Cropping

What you leave out of an image can be almost as important as what you keep in. Every time you pick up a camera, you should be cropping it in your mind and get rid of extraneous stuff that distracts from the picture's story. There are methods for fixing this in the darkroom or with software, but it is far better to develop a habit of cropping in-frame.

Composition is one of the parts of photography that really takes years to master. Because it represents the culmination of several other elements, composition is something that will present a constant challenge even to the most experienced photographer. Once you have mastered the basic rules and know how they work, then it becomes time to break them.