Basic Composition for Photography

Video Transcript

"Balance is a key component when composing your photograph. There's many, many different ways to achieve balance, and really, I'd have to say that there's no wrong way because sometimes you're going to use balance to balance out your subjects and objects, balance out things that you want people to pay attention to, versus things that you don't want people to pay attention to. Sometimes you may tip the scales to where your balance is putting more emphasis on one thing so that people pay more attention to it. This image is pretty much depicting an even balance. It was taken in Charleston, South Carolina, and what I was really going for was, I wanted to show the details of this door, but I also wanted to show what was going on beyond the door. I went with a pretty much fifty-fifty balance, and split the image in half where the shut door takes up half the image, and then all the stairs that are beyond the door take up the other half of an image. Again it's just showing how a fifty-fifty balance can work to show more than one thing at once. An example of not a fifty-fifty balance can be seen in this image. Typically, photographers don't like to put the horizon in the middle of the image. You'll notice in this image that the horizon is more probably in the top third of the image, and I did this on purpose because I wanted to put emphasis on the water and all the light that was on the water. So again, this photograph is an example of how not having a perfect fifty-fifty balance can somehow sometimes make you achieve your point. So remember when you're taking photographs to experiment with different types of balance. Balance things out evenly, balance things out unevenly and see what effect it has on your images. You may be surprised by what you get with a non-typical balance. So get out there and experiment with balance."