I have a guilty pleasure: I like to find bad photography and chuckle at it. Is that terrible? (One of my favorite sites to do this is AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com) Usually, what makes these photos so hilarious is their poor composition. A photo is only a slice of reality; therefore how you frame your subject can either portray reality, improve it, or create a silly or awkward illusion.
Silly props and goofy outfits aside, here are a few tips for composing your pictures:
1. Avoid limb chops. Try not to “cut off” fingertips, elbows and toes. Acceptable places to crop include the top of the head in a closeup (as long as it’s above the ears) and either just below the pockets or just below the knees in a close standing shot. Play with different crops and see what fits.
2. Limit tilt to photos where there is no horizon. Tilt is fine when your subjects are laying on the ground and you are taking a birds eye view photo of them. When you use tilt in a photo where there is a horizon (where the ground meets the sky), you will create the illusion that your subjects are about to slide right out of the frame. This is a common blunder among new photographers to overuse tilt because they think it looks cool.
3. Follow the rule of thirds. Mentally divide your frame into thirds in both directions (nine boxes). Whatever you want to draw attention to should be near one of the left or right intersections. The reason is there have been studies shown that the eye naturally looks to the left or right when glancing at a photo. To keep their attention, you should put something on either side of center to stop their eye from traveling all the way off the photo. Film and television tends to follow this rule as well. Next time you watch TV, pay attention to where all the action is happening; chances are you’ll notice most of it happens on the right or left side of the screen, not in the middle.