Mobile phones are capable of taking high-quality photographs, but not because they have better sensors, the images will be better. It is best to know the rules of composition to take better photographs.
Before taking a photograph you have to compose it and, it is that, many times it is forgotten that the framing is, almost, everything in a snapshot. Digitization has made us launch into taking pictures until we are left with the one we like the most, but we must try to create the scene before pressing the capture button.
We do not need to review what composition is, although if you have reached this article without having read the previous one, we will leave it linked so that you can take a look and lay the foundations for this section of photography. This time there is no introduction, we go with intermediate composition rules.
Guide lines
Everything has a direction, you just have to know where the different elements are going. This may be one of the most difficult concepts to visualize and, is that a photograph is still a two-dimensional portrait of a three-dimensional landscape. The guide lines allow you to identify the way forward In the photography.
There are many ways to use these guidelines, although the easiest and fastest way is to get everything to go to the same point. In the example photograph it is seen perfectly The image is quite harmonic and that is thanks to the fact that the photograph itself is making us look towards the center.
When it comes to putting the guide lines into practice in the composition, what you have to do is look at the landscape or, to be more specific, at what we are going to photograph. The framing to be carried out must take into account the natural elements and their directions, if we have parallel lines the easiest thing is to frame creating a vanishing point in which they will “unite”.
This is a difficult concept to imagine. But we urge you to put it into practice and for this the best thing, at least at the beginning, is to find a scenario with a well-defined horizon. Long supermarket aisles work quite well when it comes to putting this concept into practice.
Direction and movement
Photography is to capture the snapshot of a moment, but the resulting image does not have to offer a parsimonious stillness. Movement is one more element to play with and that can help us generate a much more striking photograph, as well as offering an experience based on an illusion.
And, is that, the illusion of movement is something that, as human beings that we are, affects us first-hand. On a technical level, the lines that offer this sensation of movement are the diagonals, as they are capable of offering much more disturbing information than the parallel ones.
When applying direction and movement to a photograph, you have to choose very well the element to which you want to give life. To resemble that something is moving does not have to include movement in the image, but it helps and more when you are starting in photography. The most comfortable frame will observe the object from the side.
Observing it from this position what is achieved is that said element points in a specific direction, this direction is the one that interests us and the one that will be amplified by the diagonal line that is generated by complementing it with the parallel line that forms the horizon.
Natural frames
Nature is full of frames. These frames can be anything from the empty space left by a door or window when open to a natural formation such as a rock arch or the space between the branches of a tree. There is no right way to take advantage of this space.
The guideline needed to do this is to try to frame what’s inside in the best possible way and, logically, make the frame contain this information. And, is that, the only difficulty to use this composition rule is the need to have an eye capable of distinguishing the frame and what we want to photograph.