5 Ways to Improve Your Composition Skills
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Loading... - Kiano Maiyo
- 23 Mar 2023
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Composition is one of the most important skills you can learn as a photographer. It’s also one of the trickiest elements for beginners to master, and even experienced photographers struggle to perfect their image arrangements.
Fortunately, composition has nothing to do with professional gear or expensive destinations. It’s all about observation and analysis of the scene, which anyone can learn, no matter their financial situation. Sure, you may wish to invest in a book or two to help you really dive into compositional techniques, but you can also find plenty of information here on dPS. That’s why learning to effectively frame your scenes is a much more cost-effective way of becoming a better photographer than buying a new camera or lens!
Below, I share my five top methods for improving your composition skills – so if you want to level up your images, read on!
1. Learn how to use your camera properly
If you’re hoping to create amazing compositions, it’s important that you first master the basics – which means you need to understand your camera so well that you can take photos without thinking.
Try this exercise: Close your eyes and pick up your camera. Now, without peeking, which buttons and dials adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and autofocus? How do you select the active AF (autofocus) point? How do you apply exposure compensation? If you can’t perform these operations without looking, spend some time reading your manual, then practice until you can. Remember, you should aim to become so familiar with these settings that you can adjust them automatically – with no more than a glance at your camera.
One tip: Cameras have lots of menu options, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed as you think about settings. However, I suggest you ignore nearly everything and keep your approach simple. Here’s how:
- Always shoot in RAW format and set your white balance to Auto. (You can tweak the white balance afterward when post-processing.)
- Don’t touch settings such as lens corrections, contrast, dynamic range, noise reduction, sharpness, and highlight preservation. If you shoot in RAW, these will all be irrelevant.
- Don’t switch between metering modes. Stick to one and learn how it works.
- Understand your camera’s focus modes and when to use each one.
- Learn how to select and adjust the active AF point so you can make the camera focus where you want.
- Make sure you know how to switch to Manual mode (and when it’s a good idea).
- Learn how to apply exposure compensation, preferably without taking your camera away from your eye.
For most forms of photography, you don’t need to know anything more than that. The idea is to know your camera so well that you’re not distracted by settings, and you can instead concentrate on observing the subject and finding the best possible composition.
