Before you just step up and take a picture you should consider what you want your viewers to look at and how you should display main points of interest. You should ask yourself, what is the main subject? What angle should the light be hitting in my picture? Is there anything that could accentuate the main subject? Where should the main subject be in the frame? These are all important things you should consider, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to follow the rules exactly.
The Rule of Thirds has been used for centuries and is probably the most important of all the composition techniques. The Rule of Thirds means that the frame can be divided into three horizontal sections and three vertical sections and therefore, where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect makes an ideal location for the more important parts of your picture. By locating your main subject at one of the four intersections you give the subject more emphasis than if it was right smack in the middle of the picture. This is also a good technique if you have more than one important subject, the intersections can still work even if there's a subject on more than one. The divisions can also be helpful in setting up a picture, they can for example, help you determine how much horizon you want. Most famous photographs or paintings in the world today have the rule of thirds applied to them in some way.
Simplicity is the method of keeping the information in a photograph relatively simple. If your main subject is close, then your background should be very simple to avoid distractions. You should try to keep everything not important much less interesting than what's important in the frame. Especially avoid lines or objects that lead the eye away from the subject.
Framing is the tactic of using natural surroundings to add more meaning to your subject. It could be anything such as bushes, trees, a window, or even a doorway like in the picture at the top of this page. In the process of doing this you need to be careful that you don't only focus on what's framing your subject. Make sure you focus on the main subject, and also it is a good idea to use a narrow aperture (high f/stop) to achieve a high depth-of-field. It also wouldn't hurt if the part of the picture framing the subject was darker so make sure you take your light reading on the main subject.
Texture can add a significant amount of interest in any picture. When people see texture in pictures they start imagining what it feels like to touch what's in the picture. Texture is a good idea when your taking pictures of rocks, walls, surfaces, someone's hands, or leaves. In order to make a picture reveal a texture you must make sure the light is coming almost exactly from the side of the surface so it creates shadows in places key places.
Leading Lines are used to lure the eye deeper into a picture or to an important subject. Straight, curved, parallel, or diagonal lines are all good at promoting interest. Good examples could be roads, rivers, streams, bridges, branches, or fences but there are endless things that could be used.
Colors are what add heart and emotion to your pictures. Certain color configurations can inspire awe and amazement in onlookers. Colors can be used to add all sorts of accents and effects, but you must be careful to not draw attention away from the main subject.
It might not be a bad idea to keep these key terms with you when you practice taking pictures. The best way to learn and improve your composition is just lots of practice and experimenting.
Many of you photographers have probably stared at a silhouette photo and wondered to yourself how exactly they were taken. Silhouettes could contain a couple’s moment on the beach, a person staring out at a landscape, or an amazing cityscape with the sun going down in the background. Silhouette photographers must have great timing and perfect exposure settings.
My Silhouette Tips and Methods
Exposure is the amount of light collected by the sensor in your camera during a single picture. If the shot is exposed too long the photograph will be washed out. If the shot is exposed too short the photograph will appear too dark. Almost all cameras today have light meters which measure the light in the given shot and set an ideal exposure automatically. Most people depend on the light meter which is fine, but if you know how to control your exposures you can get some creative and sometimes better pictures. (The photo on the left is with low shutter speed and narrow aperture (high f/stop).
You might wonder why there is not just a constant shutter speed or a constant aperture so that you would only have to worry about one control. The reason is that even though they both control the amount of light getting to the sensor they also control other aspects of the picture. Shutter speed for example can be used to freeze subjects in midair with a fast speed or it can be used to blur water with a slow speed. Aperture controls the depth-of-field which is what is in focus in the picture. Aperture can be used to draw attention to one subject (like the flower on the right) by blurring the background with a wide aperture (low f/stop). Aperture can also be used to focus everything in a picture with a narrow aperture (high f/stop). (The photo on the left is with Wide aperture (low f/stop) and corresponding shutter speed).
Tip 2: Use a telephoto lens. Getting closer to the action, yet staying a safe distance, is the key to photographing wildlife. By keeping your distance you allow the animal to be in their comfort zone and are more likely to get natural behavior. Safety is also a factor when photographing in the wild. Always keep at least 100 yards distance from wildlife, for your safety and for the well being of the animals. Another good use for a telephoto lens is a trick not many people know, which comes in very handy when photographing animals in the zoo that are behind fencing. If you move close to the fence (keep a safe distance) and use at least 100mm of your telephoto lens, focusing beyond the fence, with a wide aperture, you can "focus out" the fencing and take a photo of the subject with no wires! Now, there are some exceptions, such as, if the fencing is black you’ll have a much better chance of pulling this off. Regular chain link fence is gray and semi-reflective, which in the sunlight can cause a glare and is often too bright to focus out. I’ve also had some successes at trying different angles, so experiment for your best results. I often shoot with a Canon 100-400mm IS USM and a Canon 28-300mm IS USM. If you're new to telephoto lenses, on a budget and not sure what to get, I suggest the Tamron 28-300mm or a Sigma 70-300mm. I've also had great results with the Sigma 50-500 which, as of this writing, I consider to be the best bang for the buck. These lenses all work with teleconverters of 1.4x and 2.0x so you can easily extend your reach even further, often while keeping auto-focus (with Canon L lenses, a minimum aperture of 4.0 or less will support auto-focus. Above that a manual focus is your only option.)
Tip 4: Adjust your shutter speed to stop/show the action. When animals are on the move you need to decide quickly on the type of shot you want to take. If you want to freeze the action, you'll need to shoot at 1/500 or faster and depending on light, that can be tricky. One option, if you're shooting digital, is to adjust up your ISO, which will make your sensor more sensitive to light and give you that needed boost in shutter speed. Now, if you want to give a sense of motion to your image, try shooting with a shutter speed of 1/4 to 1/8 and pan your camera with the animal. Pan steady and remember, keep the eye in focus if you can! For best results, pick backgrounds that are uncluttered and simple, as this will make the subject standout in the image.
Tip 7: Composition - Framing your shots. Some simple framing advise can go a long way toward improving an image, and for those who are computer savvy, a little trick called cropping (software technique to cut a photo) can help improve composition that wasn't quite right at the time the photo was taken. The best way to think about composition is to picture a tic-tac-toe grid in the view finder of your camera (I've seen some new cameras that come with this as a feature you can turn on!) and use that grid to organize your shots. There is no hard rule, but the general theory behind good composition is that your subject lies in one of the crosshairs of the grid. Setting up your shot to lead the eye is also a good example of composition.
Bonus Tip: Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. This tip is a no-brainer for those of us who shoot digital. Shooting digital is cheap -- technology is advancing so quickly that, as of this writing, a 4 gigabyte memory card is selling for less than $100 and you can get A LOT of photos on a 4 gig memory card. The bottom line of this tip is take photos....a lot of photos. Don't be shy. I often take multiple photos of the same scene or subject and then later choose the best from the group. This is also a great way to learn; by adjusting your camera between shots you can experiment and see the results of different settings of your camera. And, don't sweat the details of trying to remember which photo had which settings...another great thing about shooting digital is something called EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format). EXIF data is written to every photo so that later, upon review, you can see every setting your camera used to take that image.
