FINEST FRAMES A COMPOSITION MASTERCLASS

The only rule of composition is that there are no rules. You might have heard this said before, but there is a grain of truth there; composition is a slippery concept and what works for one photographer in one context might not work for others. It’s also true that whilst there are no definitive rules of good composition I think we can manage to lay down some useful guidelines.

I have been teaching photography for at least a decade now and one of the hardest things to explain to people is how to frame and compose their photographs. To me, certain arrangements of image elements just ‘look right’, but that feeling comes from long practice, having been a full-time professional photographer for 35 years.

Saying something simply ‘looks right’ or ‘balanced’ to a student is not really very helpful. Exactly why does it look right? Can such a thing even be put into words? I suspect not entirely, so, since we are all visual people, let’s have a look at some images and I’ll explain what principle is in play.

Composition and framing are closely connected - you choose your framing, and your arrangements of objects within