CLASSIC COMPOSITIONAL APPROACHES
Improve your landscape compositions with these tried-and-tested techniques
Since the dawn of photography artists have been experimenting with different compositions. Over the past few centuries, however, we’ve come to accept some basic fundamental rules that you can employ if you’re struggling to get a decent composition of the scene in front of you. Many of these compositional tricks have been borrowed from other visual mediums, like paintings or drawings, and are seen as easily transferable to photography.
You’ll have likely heard of the rule of thirds before, and it is one of the classic compositional approaches that we’ll explore in more depth below. The reason you’ll have heard of it before, and probably even used it to frame your shots previously, is for good reason – it’s a tried-and-tested method that forces you to position and space your focal points and horizon in a way that makes use of the available space, and draws the eye in. An image is typically perceived as more photogenic if the focal point is carefully positioned one third of the way in from one or two sides, giving it more room to breathe compared to if you were to butt it up against the edge of the frame.
However, as with any rules, they’re only guidelines, and if you have a creative reason to go against them that helps you tell the narrative you want, then be sure to try that approach too.
We’ll take a look at other, lesserknown, compositional rules that can help improve your framing, such as the golden ratio, which is better suited to compositions with a central focal point. We’ll also see how the mathematical equation of Fibonacci’s spiral crops up constantly in nature, and how it can be used to improve your landscapes.
Many of these compositional tricks have been borrowed from other visual mediums, like paintings or drawings