Simplify

Keep your compositions simple. The outdoors is full of distracting elements that you need to crop out, preferably be­fore you download any images to your computer. Pick the most important two or three elements in the scene and make sure everything else is minimized or eliminated completely from view. If there is something in the scene that doesn’t help tell your story, keep it out of your picture. Viewers shouldn’t have to hunt around a photo to figure out what it is about. Also, pay attention to the background and edges of your photo and be sure they are clean and don’t take away interest from your main subject.

The Rule of Thirds

A simple guideline to keep in mind when com­posing your photos is the “rule of thirds.” This rule is very basic, but I guar­antee it will help many of your compositions. I use the rule of thirds in two ways. First I use it to help me place my horizon line in the photo. Imagine dividing your viewfinder into thirds horizon­tally. This gives you one line that is one-third of the way from the top and one line that is one-third of the way from the bottom. Now place your horizon on either of those lines, not in the middle. Simple as that. My second use of this rule is to help me place my main subject in the frame. Now imag­ine two more lines, this time dividing the frame into thirds vertically. So now you have two lines going across the frame horizontally, and two vertically, with four intersection points. Place your main subject on or close to one of these intersec­tions. By getting your main subject out of the middle of your frame, you will usually end up with a more dynamic photo.

Be Intimate

Getting close with your camera lets you emphasize your subject, helps viewers of your photograph feel like they are in the scene, and gives the image more impact. Make sure your main subject is big enough in the frame to grab attention. I especially like using wide-angle lenses for my close-ups. They let you focus on subjects less than a foot away from the cam­era, making them appear large in your viewfinder, while also capturing some of the background scenery in order to create a sense of place. Just remember to be safe with this idea. Get­ting close to a lady’s slipper or your 2-year-old is one thing. Trying to take up-close shots of rattlesnakes or mountain li­ons may not be healthy!

Anchor Wide Shots

Whether you get very close or not, using wide-angle lenses helps involve your viewer with your subject, creating a sense of place by taking advantage of these lenses’ large depths of field, or the amount of your photograph that appears to be in focus. For example, if you focus your camera on a tulip, not only will the tulip be in focus, but part of the scene in front of the tulip and behind the tulip will also appear to be in focus. This range of apparent sharpness is the depth of field of the image. You get more depth of field with wide-angle lenses and less with telephoto lenses.

You also get more depth of field with smaller apertures like F16 than with larger apertures like F4. (The aperture is the size of the opening in the lens that allows light to pass through to your camera’s sensor. The size of this opening is designated by an F-number. To confuse matters, the smaller the F-number, the larger the lens opening. So F4 is actually bigger than F16.)

Wide-angle shots work best if they have a strong fore­ground feature as well as an interesting background. When you include a foreground feature that “anchors” the scene and use a small aperture to maximize depth of field, your viewers will feel like they were standing there with you when you shot the photo. Even small digital point-and-shoots let you choose your own aperture setting if you want (read your man­ual if you want to learn the specifics for your camera–I highly recommend this!). However, if you want to let the camera do most of the thinking, see if your camera has a “landscape” shooting mode (most do), which will basically do its best to maximize depth-of-field for you.

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