Composition Techniques For Better Photographs.
Composition is one of the most important elements of photography, and one that can mean the difference between an interesting and powerful image compared to a lifeless boring image. In this post I will be explaining various techniques that should help you with your travel photography and to take much better pictures.
Use Reflections
Using reflections is an amazing technique for taking more interesting travel photographs. If you use then you’ll find that images that use reflections will likely get a much better response from your photography tips. To capture images with reflections you can use water such as lakes and rivers, puddles, or windows and other elements. It’s important to note that hoping to get reflection shots if it’s windy or raining, or if there are boats or other objects moving on the water will be hard as the water will likely be disturbed rather than still.
Use Leading Lines
Leading lines is one of the most powerful composition techniques for taking awesome photos. This is where you use elements in the scene to lead a viewers eye to the main subject. This may be a fence, path, roads, architectural elements and so much more. To make it work you may need to crouch down low to the ground when taking photographs, so as to draw more attention to where the eye should start. Or if you are in a high viewpoint then roads may help with this technique.
For this first image I crouched down low to get the composition.And for the image below I had a higher viewpoint. The eye would start on the bottom left and be drawn towards the person and then the background.
Frame your Subject
Using elements around you to frame your subject, such as trees, windows, arches and other features can be very effective. As well as adding more elements to your image it’ll draw your viewers into the final subject. It can also be a good way to remove skies when they aren’t that interesting such as seen below.
Add Depth and Layers
Another great composition technique for taking better travel photographs is to add depth and layers. This means that your scene may have a foreground, such as rocks, a midpoint which might be a person or boat, house etc, and then a background, which may be mountains, a city etc.The below image has flowers in the foreground, the town in the middle and mountains in the background.
Get Low
Getting low to the ground is a great way to capture nice images. It is especially good when you are taking pictures of streets that have nice cobbled pavements. Or when you are taking pictures of landscapes consider using grass, flowers and other natural elements. When using this on landscapes sometimes using a wider aperture and blurring your foreground works well.
Zoom and Compressing
Using a zoom lens such as 100mm+ and using it to compress a scene can work well. Such as a picture with a person and a mountain, but where the mountain is far away, by using a zoom lens this would make the mountain and person seem so much closer together. I don’t have a great example of this, but you can see some examples in this post: How Lens Focal Lengths Will Affect Background Compression.
