What do the pros know that make their photos look so much better than mine???
Okay...there are many things the pros know that make their photos so much better than ours that they can sell them for enough to make a living. There are also a lot of business talents involved in a pro career, but let's keep our discussion on the photo side.
Composition is a major factor in whether or not a photo "looks good" to us or not.
Composition is the way you put a photo together and arrange the items within the frames of the viewfinder before you push the shutter. It's the way subjects and objects are "arranged" in the photo. When you look through the viewfinder, you see a lot of things. Some of them are moveable and some aren't. Most of the time you're moveable and you can vary the way things look in the viewfinder by moving to another position. Your selection of a lens (either built into the camera, or changeable and chosen for this particular shot) affects your view. If you look through the viewfinder and take the time to make some adjustments, you're on your way to a better photo. There are a lot of "rules" of composition, and I'll be going into some of them on these pages as I add more.
The "rule of thirds" is possibly the most commonly used rule, so I'll start with that one.
When you look through your viewfinder, imagine that there are 2
lines dividing the image area equally into three sections
vertically and three sections horizontally. See the white lines in
my image of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, skyline below.
Now, when I was composing that image in my viewfinder I had 2 basic things in mind other than wanting to show the beauty of Tulsa. I wanted to use the right and bottom side of a "frame" (the bridge in the foreground is the bottom, and the tall building and trees at the right are the right side), and I also knew the rule of thirds would be helpful.
Notice how the bridge almost exactly follows the lower line dividing the frame into horizontal thirds. The "solid" and "heavy" base of the bridge at the bottom starts at the bottom thirds line and is kept below that line. If the bridge had been higher in the composition it would have been too heavy and would have overpowered the skyline that I wanted to emphasize in the background. I wanted the bridge frame to be a major part of the final print, but I didn't want it to be the main focus, so I kept it's visual weight below the lower thirds line.
The cylindrical building on the right was handled exactly the same way. It's an unusual building so I definitely wanted to include it. But, again, I didn't want it to be the main subject. So I handled it exactly the same way that I handled the bridge; put it on a focus line (the thirds lines) but keep it's bulk to the right of the line.
And that leaves me with exactly what I'd hope for in that composition. I have a frame formed around the lower and right thirds lines with the corner of the frame at the intersection of the lines. I have the pretty skyline of the Tulsa downtown area inside that frame. I have included but de-emphasized the heavy bulk of the bridge and the closer round building on the right. And the overall picture that results appears balanced and gets across the ideas of Tulsa that I wanted to get across when I took the photo. Those ideas I wanted to show were: 1 - Tulsa is a pretty town. 2 - Tulsa is built on a river and has trees and greenery. And, 3 - Tulsa has a diversity of architecture styles.
Another thing to remember about the thirds lines is that if you really want to emphasize something, put it directly at the intersection of two of the lines. In my photo above I use that only to give my frame more weight in the composition and to ensure that the viewer didn't look totally past it to the skyline in the distance. I wanted it to be a noticeable part of the composition.
LOOK at photos that you see in magazines (and even scenes in movies) and you'll see this simple rule of thirds used over and over.
It's a very useful tool.
I'll be adding more composition hints as quickly as I can. But, remember, the best way to get better photos is NOT simply to read about it, but to actually shoot photos. Go out there and take some pictures today! (And check back here to see if I've finished writing these pages)