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 frame edge.

However, as with any rules, they’re only guidance, and if you have a creative reason to go against the rules that helps you tell the narrative you want, then be sure to try that approach too.

We’ll take a look here at some other lesser-known compositional rules that can help you to improve your framing too, such as the golden ratio, which is better suited to compositions with a central focal point. We’ll also look at how the mathematical equation of Fibonacci’s spiral crops up time and again in nature and can be used to improve your landscape compositions.

Many of these compositional tricks have been borrowed from other visual mediums