First Rule of Composition

Over that past few blogs, I have been looking at using light from a hand held strobe.  The applications are endless and definitely open creative options.  Good lighting is only part of the story.  Composition plays a major role in creating a good image and that is what the next few blogs are going to be about.

The most basic concept of good composition is fill the frame.  Make sure that your image uses the entire space within the frame. Avoid including anything that does not need to be in the image to tell the story.  For example, if you photograph is of a group of people, then fill the frame with that group. If it is of a group of people standing in front of a church, then fill the frame with that - if the parking lot filled with cars is not part of the image concept, then do not include it in the frame.

Because digital photography makes post production easier, there is a tendency for photographers to "shoot loose" with the intent of cropping later.  There are a number of reasons to avoid this.  The two biggest ones are

1. Cropping your image reduces the available resolution and can potentially reduce the quality of the image.
2. It takes time.  And wen you are talking about a great number of images like you would get from a portrait session or a wedding, you could save yourself hours by getting it right in the camera.

To fill the frame in camera, you need to consider what your final output size will be because this will be your outside frame.  I prefer to have my output be the same as dimensions as my camera's sensor so that the frame of my image is the same as the frame in my viewfinder.  However, there are many situations when the output is going to be a different proportion than the sensor.  You should spend some time learning where different proportion will show up in your viewfinder.  This will save you hours of time and many headaches.

So, the first key to better composition is to fill your frame with the image you want to take.