photo composition {photography 101}

Hey friends! I’ve invited Josie, our social media specialist, to share some photography tips with you today. She is also a professional photgrapher–so she knows what she’s talking about! And seriously, she found the CUTEST model in the whole world. Ok, Josie, take it away!

Hi everyone! Today I am going to teach you a little about photo composition. In other words, constructing and forming your photograph in the way you want to get the message across. I asked my little sister, Ally, to be my model for me in this post!

You can make a picture look so many different ways and portray many stories. Where the highlighted object in a photograph is located is essential. I am going to walk you through a few tips to help you with this.

The first tip on photo composition that I would like to share with you is called the ‘rule of thirds’. This rule is actually quite easy to follow and will make for a great picture. The grid below shows 9 boxes and there are intersecting points. Make sure the item in focus is at one of those intersecting lines. The item that you have in focus along this line intersection will be the primary subject.

My second tip would be to keep the subject’s eyes in focus. This means, always have the focal point on the eye.

Next, you want to get a natural smile right? A lot of times when you pose someone they can feel awkward and not feel themselves. So crack a joke and snap away, taking 20 or 30 photos of the same pose is okay. This way you will have plenty facial expressions to choose from. If you don’t want to stick with the rule of thirds you don’t have to!

Finally, it is so important to scan the entire background. What I like to do is start from the edge closest to the subject and follow that edge until you go all the way around. Sometimes there are objects in the background that you will not want and you will need to reposition yourself to cut them out. Also, it is important to check that no objects are popping out behind the subjects head (palm trees, poles, etc…).

Often times when I take pictures it means moving around the subject or me repositioning the subject.

I hope these photo tips were helpful! I love getting creative when taking pictures.

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Thank you, Josie! And thank you, Ally {the best model EVER!} Hey friends, what else do you want to learn about photography? I think we should make this a regular series on the blog–because I want to learn more, too!