Master the Composition (Part 1)

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How important is the Composition?

I had a discussion with a friend of mine who is not a photographer when he asked me, why does the image taken by a photographer look better compared to the one captured by non-photographer? and that clicked something in my mind, it is about the quality of the picture, but what is the quality of the picture?. and how could we produce a high-quality image? Maybe the equipment is the key? or the skills of the photographer or the timing or maybe the quality of the light, the direction of the light. in reality, all of the above have an impact on the quality of the picture but what about the composition? let’s talk about the composition in more detail and find out if it is important to the image or not.you may believe as I do, that the good composition makes the eye, any eye comfortable with the image. that is the most important part. then you can talk about the rest of the elements that create the image. in order to understand the composition, we need to know something about what they like to call it rules. many photographers and I would like to call them tools or guidelines cause you can break them later but my advice is to master them first! 

In this series, I will try to cover as many as I can,

• Rule of Third
• Curves
• Framing
• Layers
• Lines
• Shapes
• Patterns
• Perspective
• Texture
• Anchor point
• Rule of Odd

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Rule of Third

The above picture has been taken in 2014 from Dubai Marina capturing the iconic landmarks (Borg El Arab and Burj Khalifa) from the seaside. you will find 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines dividing the photo into 3 horizontal sections, 3 vertical sections, and 4 strong points. As per the rule of thirds, you should place your subject in one of these intersections where the vertical lines cross the horizontal ones. but when you photograph moving the subject or human or even birds or animals, you need to consider their moving direction or where they are looking at as below,

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This picture has been taken in Georgia in 2016 in one of the hotels there. the statue if you notice look at the right side. so that it is better to keep the space in front of him not behind him. Notice that keeping space in front of the subject where it is direction seems to be, help to improve the composition.

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Another example of the rule of thirds and the direction is in the above image which is actually has been taken by mobile phone(The same concepts apply to mobile photography). It doesn’t mean that you cannot break such a rule. sure you can. however, let’s stick to what we agreed on to master them all first and then go break them. at least you know what you break 😉
Next time we will talk about some other tools of the composition See you then. Have a nice photography time!

See you in Part 2