Nobody’s perfect, and nobody knows everything, so nobody’s born knowing which photo compositions look elegant and which to avoid. So there’s no harm in doing a simple composition exercise right out in the field. You just need to find an interesting subject.

We all often examine the work of other photographers, professionals, and the best in our field so as to capture and absorb at least a part of their skill, so we can apply it later in our own pictures. Let’s try extending our study of the great works one step farther outwards, to painting. What can painters’ great works offer photographers?

Some colors perfectly match, while others strongly clash. But color contrasts are often precisely the way to give photos striking composition.

No more walking the mountaintops waiting for better weather! You’ll find scenes for macro photography everywhere around you—or you can create them on your own. Miniature abstract compositions don’t demand any complicated ideas, and yet they can still be a delight to the eyes.

Is center composition always a mistake, or—when you know what you’re doing—can it benefit your photos? We’ll show you several examples of when you should compose to the center and when to avoid center compositions, and also how to improve a photo you’ve center-composed.

Maybe you’ve been there—standing somewhere with a breathtaking nature scene in front of you. You pressed the trigger a few times, but for all the world you couldn’t get a picture that really showed the beauty you had before you. What was the problem?

Using a series of repeating objects in a photo’s background can make it compositionally impressive. It gives the photo a rhythm—which you can then interrupt with a properly placed subject. And if you hide the end of the series of objects that form the rhythm, you make the photo feel endless. Your audience gets the feeling that the row of repeating objects never ends.

One very simple and effective way to emphasize your subject is to find a high-contrast background. You can contrast your subject against the background not only visually, but also in terms of its meaning. These contrasts are especially strong when a picture contains two elements that seem dissimilar, but join together to form a surprising composition with a powerful message.

When a photo tells a story and uses several objects to tell it, that can be a lot for your audience to digest. To make sure they know how to read the photo, position the different parts of its composition so that the photo forms a single, balanced whole. The photo shouldn’t feel like one side or the other is too “heavy.” Let’s take a look at today’s article at how to use composition to get a correctly balanced picture.

Flowers and other plants can be compelling subjects, and you can get fancier than just photographing them the same way every time. Take inspiration from today’s article and read up on the why’s and how’s of composing when you’re photographing plants.