Everyone who presses the shutter button on a camera or phone is composing an image. It doesn’t matter what’s in the photo, a landscape, your family, or a pet, the composition must be done correctly.

The beauty captured in a landscape is often something that can inspire a viewer to come and see that sight for themselves. It can also allow someone to experience something of an exotic place they may never visit on their own – but seeing it through your art can allow them to feel some connection to that place nonetheless.

There are several tools you can use to draw your audience’s eyes towards your photos’ subjects. But there are also many ways in which you can accidentally transfix your audience with something different than what you intended. So in today’s article, read up on the right way to get your audience’s attention and keep them focused on your subject. That will give your pictures better, more pleasing composition.

As a photographer, you have one fundamental tool for defining pictures’ composition. That tool is the way you place your subject in the frame. You can do this job best if you know about the Golden Crop and the Rule of Thirds. Your placement of the subject within a photo’s space affects not only how easy it is overall to interpret, but also the meaning of what it says.

Get the hang of composition basics and start creating more aesthetic photos that are more pleasing to your audience. Observe these rules of composition to advance from just recording reality to doing real photography. Or deliberately violate some of them to make your work provocative. But make sure it’s clear that the reason why you’re breaking the rules is because you know the rules.

Image composition is a critical element that can elevate—or deflate—the value of your photographs. Thus it’s something that you should never underestimate.