Improving Your Photo Composition Skills

What’s the most difficult aspect of photography? To a beginning photographer, camera controls and exposure theory usually top the list. Even more experienced photographers often feel that what their photography needs is more technical skill – either with the camera, or with Photoshop. Good technical skill is, of course, critical to getting good photos, but as you may have guessed from the title of this post, my answer to the question of “what is the most difficult aspect of photography” is composition.

Composition is more than just a set of rules or guidelines for how to frame a shot. Your knowledge and understanding of composition influences the way you see even when you’re not looking through the viewfinder of a camera. In fact, composition skills are what make a good photographer know to lift up their camera in the first place.

In my Foundations of Photography: Composition course, I walk the viewer through a number of basic, but essential, compositional ideas. These are the building blocks that all compositions are based on, and they’re not hard to learn. But is that all there is to composition? Can you learn some simple ideas and know everything that you need to know? At this point you’re probably expecting me to say “no” because you know that I’m lining you up to watch another course. But I’m not going to say no to that question. Instead, I’m going to offer the idea that you already know everything you need to know about composition. You always have known everything you need to know about composition. Congratulations!

In my latest course Photography: Advanced Composition, I introduce the idea that we all have an innate, inherent sense of composition – it’s built-in to us and it can serve us very well when taking photos. The trick to “learning composition” then is to learn how to better tune-in to this innate sense that you already have. The lessons and foundations that I taught in my first Composition course will get you started on this path and in this new course, you’ll dive deeper into what makes a good photo, how to recognize one, and how to get yourself to more easily see them.

You'll never stop learning about composition, but this latest course is a good place to start learning more.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/learning/photography-advanced-composition