Finding Great Photo Composition

By Lissa Ballard

You've just returned from your son's 4th birthday party at the local park and you've got 3 rolls of film. You know you got loads of great shots and deciding what to scrap will be a REAL chore! So, how do you decide what to scrap and what to just put into the photo album? Better yet, how to make some of those shots really focus on the memories of the day?

Let's face it, we've all had these same types of dilemmas where we've taken way too many photos, but you knew you wanted to remember the event. Here are some great rules of thumb on which pictures to choose to scrap and then choosing what part of them to include and what part of them to leave behind.

First of all take the event apart. There are bound to be several really memorable moments during the event that are the real memory makers of the day. For birthday's (for the sake of our example), you'll want the cake, the candle blowing, a few great guest shots and the oh so special present and birthday boy. So, after looking through your photos, choose only the best of all of them to scrap.

Next, choose the real focus of each of the photos. In good scrapping, your photos really should be able to tell the story before your journaling does. So, each of your photos should have a good focus of the idea of your story. Once you determine what that focal point is, decide if there's too much in the background and it's too busy, whether or not the background "information" is needed to help remember the day (after all it might have been the last time Great Aunt May made it to one of the birthday parties). If you decide you need to crop, there are some basic rules of thumb to doing so.

1) Be careful to crop between the joints. Cropping at the joints somehow leaves a viewer feeling a bit uneasy. As though something is missing from the photo. Think about the amateur and professional photographers who comes to the schools to take photos. They don't take photos at the waist. They don't cut you off at the neck. They ensure they get the neck and at least part of the shoulder/chest area. Standing photos generally get an individual about chest and above. You won't see one at the waist. You will see some space above the head to "carry the eye upward". Not too much but enough so the subject can grow.

2) How many times have you seen artists and photographers laughing hold up their thumbs and forefingers in a "L" shape and put them together to form a frame around a subject. As odd as it looks, and as strange as it sounds, this really really works! If you have a still photo to take of someone or something, try "framing" it this way prior to taking the photo. Be sure you look not just at the subject for good lighting and placement, but look at the background. Is it non-distracting? If it's too busy, you'll want to change something or even complete location.

If you find your fingers are not really long enough to do what you want, you can easily make two "Ls" from a frame mat! Take a ready made mat (no more than 1 inch deep but about 8-10 inches in length) and line up a ruler at opposite corners (for instance: put one edge of your ruler at the lower left point and the upper edge of your ruler at the upper right point). Carefully, using a craft knife, cut a "mitered corner" all the way down leaving you with two "L" shaped pieces of mat. Use these to help frame your photo shoots and when cropping.

For cropping smaller pictures (4x6 and smaller) you can use the same procedure on a 4x6 mat or a 5x7 mat. You can adjust the lengths to overlap to enclose your subject just right to allow for perfect cropping.

If you are framing a photo to determine proper cropping placement, when you've adjusted your "L"s properly, carefully hold them in place and mark your photo with a photo pencil. A dot in each corner should be enough to be able to then remove your "L"s, grab your metal edged ruler, line up your dots and cut with a craft knife.

Remember the rule of three. Fill your photo two thirds with your subject and one third "space". If you have a close up of your child, let him or her fill up two thirds of the photo, leaving about a third of space around him/her for "breathing room". This will offer maximum exposure to your focal subject and leave the viewer with adequate room for breathing.

If you're taking a group photo try to frame your group the same way. Leave some room to see where the subjects are which could have a lot to do with why they are together to begin with. Don't loose too much of the surroundings but don't leave too much of them in to confuse the onlooker.

Placement of your subject in a photo can also change the tone of your photograph. Try taking photos of your subjects filling the right two thirds or the left two thirds of your frame. (Better yet, pick up those cool "L" pieces and take a look around you at different photo ops and framing them different ways. See how lighting is sometimes affected and how the tone of the photo can change from whimsical to serious just in how and where you place your subject.

Last but not least, if you're cropping scenic photos or photos with a visible horizon, be sure to avoid putting the horizon directly in the center of your photo. Frequently what we wanted to capture in that photograph is better suited to filling a left or right two thirds of your photo with a horizon line more towards the top or bottom of the picture. See how the composition changes using your "L"s to get a better perspective on how this will work for you.