subject: How to Take a Great Picture - Composition in Photography [print this page] How to Take a Great Picture - Composition in Photography
Do you know how to take a beautiful photograph that perfectly captures important moments in your life? Novice photographers just need to learn the three rules of composition to improve their picture taking skills!The rules of composition are simple enough for the amateur to understand. Find out how to incorporate the principles of the Rule of Thirds, Golden Section Rule, and Diagonal Rule into your photography.
The Rules of Composition
The rules of composition are simple enough for the amateur to understand. Find out how to incorporate the principles of the Rule of Thirds, Golden Section Rule, and Diagonal Rule into your photography.
The Rule of Thirds
According to the Rule of Thirds, when people look at a picture, their eyes are automatically drawn to a point that is about two-thirds up the photo. Based on this theory, most photographers section images into thirds to help achieve a sense of visual balance.
For example, if you are taking a landscape shot of the sky and ocean and wish to emphasize the water in the photo, the sky would occupy the top third of the photo while the ocean would be featured in the remaining two-thirds of the image. Conversely, if the sky is to be emphasized, it would be captured in the upper two-thirds of the photo and the water would be in the bottom third.
The Golden Section Rule
Babylonian, Egyptian, ancient Greek masters, Leonardo da Vinci, and Salvador Dali used the Golden Section Rule to provide proportion to their art and highlight the most important elements in a picture. When taking a photo, imagine that the image is divided into nine unequal parts. Four lines are drawn, and each line is drawn so that the width of the resulting small part of the image relates to that of the big part exactly as the width of the whole image relates to the width of the big part. Points where the lines intersect are the "golden" points of the picture.
The Diagonal Rule
According the Diagonal Rule, important linear elements in an image should be placed along a diagonal line to make the photo more powerful.
