COMPOSING YOUR PHOTO'S LIKE A PRO

GUEST POST::PHOTOGRAPHER JENNIFER SQUIRES

Hi!  I'm Jennifer, and I'm very pleased to meet you!  I'm honoured that I've been asked to write a post here; this is my first time blogging away from home so please be gentle.  Shall we get down to business?  I get a lot of questions about tips and tricks to improve the overall look of photographs and there are so many things you can play with to spruce up your images that this post is going to be the first of two from me about composition.

{photo by jennifer squires}

Check the edges.  Get into the habit of checking the edges of your photographs before you take them.  This is one of the simplest things you can do and has the potential to give you the biggest bang for your buck.  Are you cutting off half of Aunt Ann's face?  Are you leaving too much room next to Aunt Mary?  Is some stranger's weird tattooed elbow sneaking into the edge of the photo?  To remedy these situations all you need to do is reposition your camera.

Clear the clutter.  One of the biggest differences between photography and many other art forms is that you need to decide what not to include in your image.  The background and the area surrounding the main focus of your photograph are very important areas so try to keep them simple and free of distracting elements that may draw attention away from your subject.  There are a few things that you can do to help the situation; Take a minute and carefully move distracting items away from the area that you will be photographing; Move your subject to an area with less clutter; Adjust your camera angle so that the clutter is less evident.

{photo by jennifer squires}

Move in close.  Many times when people are taking photographs they get so excited and so focused on what they're photographing that they don't see that they are leaving way too much space around the edges.  Try taking two steps closer to your subject before you take the picture next time.  This will focus attention on the more important, interesting areas of the image - such as a person's eyes or the centre of a flower.

Take vertical photographs.  Cameras are designed to easily and comfortably take horizontal photographs, but that doesn't mean that all images must be created this way.  Many subjects lend themselves nicely to vertical photographs such as a person or two, tall buildings, trees, and waterfalls.  Not sure if something should be a horizontal or a vertical?  Take one of each, the more you do it the easier it will be to quickly determine which works best in many situations.
Stay tuned for my next post where I talk more about composition and camera positioning and I'll try to answer any reader's questions.

jennifer squires productionsfresh photography for hip homeswww.jennifersquires.ca

P.S. Miss B here, please, please, please don't be shy about asking questions in the comments.  Jennifer and the other lovely photographers have so generously offered to answer your questions no matter how lame you may think they are.  I was so happy to find out what a 'fast lens' was from Alex and she didn't balk or laugh at me once, nope she didn't. I will be back later today to let all you pretties know about our new Flickr group, and when I write 'our' I mean me and you and you and you!  It's going to be fun for the whole family!

P.P.S. Thank you Jennifer!!!