How do I compose a photograph better?

Composition sounds like an artistic gift. In practice it is a short list of decisions applied consistently, and the biggest of them is what you leave out.

Step by step

1. Decide what the photograph is actually of.One subject. A picture that is of six things is of nothing, and it is the commonest reason a photograph of a beautiful place looks disappointing.
2. Check the background first.Bins, signs, a lamppost apparently growing out of someone's head. Look at the background before the subject — a step to one side usually fixes it.
3. Put the subject off centre.Roughly a third of the way in, or on one of the four points where the thirds lines cross. Dead centre works for deliberate symmetry and rarely otherwise.
4. Place the horizon on a third.Upper third when the foreground is the interesting part, lower third when the sky is. Halfway divides the picture into two competing halves.
5. Use lines to lead the eye.A path, a fence, a river, a row of windows. Lines running into the frame carry attention towards the subject, and lines running out of it carry attention away.
6. Move your feet.Zooming changes magnification; moving changes the relationship between subject and background, which is a much more powerful change. Get closer than feels comfortable.
7. Change your height.Almost every photograph is taken from standing eye level. Crouching, kneeling or holding the camera high immediately makes an ordinary subject look considered.
8. Watch the edges of the frame.Before pressing the shutter, run your eye round the border. Half a bicycle or a stray elbow at the edge is distracting and easy to avoid at the time.
9. Leave space in the direction of movement.A person walking or looking to the left wants space on the left. Space behind them makes the frame feel cramped and wrong without the viewer knowing why.
10. Simplify.Fewer elements, plainer background, closer in. If a picture is not working, the answer is almost always to remove something rather than to add something.
11. Break the rules deliberately.Centred symmetry, a horizon in the middle of a reflection, a subject small in a huge landscape — all work when chosen. The point is to choose rather than to default.

Tips

• Check the background before the subject. One step sideways fixes most of them.
• Move your feet instead of zooming. It changes the picture, not just the magnification.
• Run your eye around the edges before pressing the shutter.

Common mistakes

• Including everything you can see — A photograph is a much smaller and flatter thing than the scene in front of you. Detail that reads as context in person reads as clutter in a picture.
• Always shooting from standing height — It gives every photograph the same familiar viewpoint. Changing height by half a metre is the quickest way to make an ordinary subject look deliberate.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask