Photo basics: How to compose a photograph

Consider this image of cruise ships invading a small Alaskan town. Sure, you can immediately recognize that there are big boats in this picture, and a mountain range, and some water, but it doesn’t really make sense as you’re not really sure what you’re supposed to look at here. Is this a picture of boats? Of mountains? Is it supposed to be a picture of boats in front of mountains? Mostly, it’s just a confusing jumble of elements.

Now look at this take on the same scene. It’s far easier to understand. With the funicular in foreground of the shot, we have a very clear subject. We still get the big boats, and the mountains, and the general scene, but with the funicular planted firmly where it is, our shot has a definite subject and background.

This is the most important composition concept to remember: Your image must have a subject. More importantly, the subject must be obvious to the viewer! For example, with this image you might say “But this picture has a subject, it’s my friend Hans.” But the picture also has a beach, some other people, and the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the greatest engineering feats of all time. Any of those are worthy of being the subject. As a photographer, you have to choose whether your subject is going to be the person, or the bridge—you can’t have both as a subject.

This re-composed shot is framed so that Hans is clearly the subject. We’ve still got the bridge and a general sense of the place, but more importantly we have a very clear subject and background.

Another reason the background is not distracting is that it has been thrown out of focus. A shallow depth of field is a great tool for separating your subject from its surroundings. Learn how to create a shallow depth of field.

Subject and background may seem like obvious concepts that you feel you already understand. However, bear in mind this is the most common problem with beginning photographers, so be certain that the subject of your image is clear and well-represented.

As you organize the components of your shot with the idea of presenting a clear subject and background, keep an eye on the balance of your image. Different things in a photo have different compositional weight, and just as with weights in the real world, you need to balance them. The top photo shows an image that has good balance—the bird in the far lower right corner balances the two birds in the upper left. But when we delete the bird in the right corner in the lower photo, the image falls out of balance.

You don’t just have to balance your image using things; light and dark can also work to create balance, as seen in this photo. The dark shadows of the sidewalk under the scaffolding on the left are balanced out by the bright street scene on the right.

Note that it's often fine to let shadows fall into complete blackness. Just because there's detail there, we don't necessarily need to see it. Remember, the goal is to reduce clutter and simplify, so if letting things fall into shadow helps simplify your image, then work with that. The cat in this image is much more visible, and much more obvious as a subject because the shadow areas above him went to complete black.

Most of the time, the trickiest part of getting a good photo isn't getting what you want in the frame, but keeping what you don’t want out of the frame. In photography, less is almost always more. So, it’s very important to keep an eye on everything that’s in the scene. Before you shoot, trace your eyes around the edge of the frame and ask yourself if you actually need everything that’s there. Most of the time, you’ll probably find that you’ll be better-served by getting in closer, and cropping out more detail, as we did with the image on the right.

Composition doesn’t just happen while you’re shooting. Using the crop tool in your photo editor, you can re-frame your shot later, effectively recomposing it. Through cropping, you can eliminate clutter, or re-balance your image. Sometimes, you shoot with the idea of cropping later, because you simply can’t get the shape you want, in-frame. For example, if you want to shoot a really wide landscape.

But whenever possible, you should always try to compose correctly in-camera—if you have to crop later, you’ll be throwing away pixels, and therefore reducing your maximum print size.

If you're cropping a photo in an image editor, follow these basic cropping rules and tips.

Finally, don’t over-think your compositions. Sometimes the best choice is simply to put your subject in the middle of the frame. As long as you have a clear subject and background, without lots of extraneous details, a simple composition like the one in this image will work fine.