I gotta tell you, I have no idea how any of us ever managed to learn this craft well enough to make the photographs we do. There’s just so much to learn! Exposure alone can be tricky at first, but these days, there are so many different modes and buttons and dials. With time, it becomes intuitive-feeling, but it’s a lot.
And even then, we can master the camera without ever really mastering the skills needed to make a compelling photograph.
Last week, I was going through the many resources I’ve created for you over the years, and I came across one that you might not have seen: The Composition Checklist.I’d like you to have a copy of that, together with a video I made with three suggestions on how to make the most of the checklist.
When I first introduced these two resources, I made the mistake of advertising them on Facebook. Totally free resources—no catch, no strings attached—and they still drew out the haters and the critics! 😂 One of them berated me for the idea that composition could be reduced to a checklist, which, of course, it can’t (and I didn’t at all mean to imply that it could be). But there are ideas that are helpful to remember when you’re framing a photograph, and I thought an easy-to-reference guide might be useful to you.
Composition is important; it’s the visual language photographers use to make their photographs compelling. And for some reason, it’s some of the last stuff we are taught (if we’re taught at all).
A quick story. Years ago, before Covid wrecked everything, I did a series of workshops in places like Italy. We’d put some time aside in the middle of the day to look at images and discuss them. The assignment was (I thought) simple: look at the image and describe one decision the photographer made to make the image and what that decision contributed. You could talk about balance and how it was achieved. You could talk about how the vertical framing reinforced the vertical elements in the image. Perhaps you might talk about how the main subject was well isolated using depth of field or a longer lens. Or you could talk about what didn’t work. Maybe important elements were getting cut off by the edges of the frame. Maybe the chosen moment wasn’t strong enough to create a dynamic composition. I mean, the sky was the limit. Yet, the reply I most often got was just a blank stare and a mumbled, uncomfortable version of, “Well, I like it…”
“That’s all? That’s all you can say about this photograph? That you like it??” I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I wanted to have a lively conversation about composition, and it always ended up feeling like an interrogation.
It taught me an important lesson. I was asking photographers to think in ways they hadn’t yet been taught. I had ambushed them and expected them to have the same vocabulary that I did. Many of them knew cabalistic things about cameras that I still don’t understand, but when it came to photographs, they struggled. Ideas like balance and tension, or using contrast or juxtaposition (I talked about this in this recent post/article). Ideas like repeated elements or thinking about the energy of the photograph were all a bit foggy.
So let me ask you: how’s your composition? Do you think about the way the elements in the frame relate to each other and what they accomplish in the image? Is it time to check in with some of those ideas?
Anyways, The Composition Checklist is a simple thing, but combined with the accompanying 10-minute video, I’m hoping it can give you a bit of a nudge and maybe help you ask some important questions as you shoot.
You can get your copy of The Composition Checklist by clicking here. Still free, still no strings attached. Just click this link, tell me where to send it and I’ll send you both the PDF checklist and the video to download.
Don’t be that photographer who knows more about camera design than visual design. And once you’ve checked out these two free resources, if you want to chat about composition or ask questions, I would love to have that conversation in the comments here on my blog.
For the Love of the Photograph,
David
Comments
This checklist is in many ways very familiar and surely very useful for everyone having a camera. I just try to forget all that and I hope it is more like an unconscious process in my head. Something like driving a car when I want to get home (for example) – I’m not all the time THINKING how to use the pedals or the steering wheel or how to be careful with other vehicles…
Sometimes my images look OK IMO. Found home ;- )
While I haven’t looked at it, I imagine this download will be very helpful in evaluating a photo. If you don’t mind, please bear with my story that I tell often these days as I learn more about photography. In my senior year in high school, I was in a Humanities class that taught Art, History and English with 3 teachers. In the first Art discussion, I was asked what I thought of a certain painting. I said I liked it. The teachers asked why. I said I thought it was pretty. They told me that was no reason to like it. They badgered me for a response and I had none. Finally I turned to my right-brained friend (I was the math whiz) and muttered, “I hate art.” The teachers heard me and I became “Hope comma the person who hates art, for the next 8 months until I stopped going to class the day I turned 18. And so began my lifelong disinterest in art… I was told by a photography instructor a couple of years ago that the problem was that I did not have the language to explain how I felt about Art. Same is true for photography. Interestingly enough, in that same photography class, we had to share photos of a photographer we admired. Yet when I did, her partner told me why my opinion was wrong…So please don’t ask me! 😁