Blog By Photographer Joe Geyer

Tools of Composition

This is the beginning of a series of posts about the tools of composition and will be accompanied by Tiktok videos on my tiktok account. This initial post will give a list of what the tools of composition are with a brief description. And there will be specific posts for each tool moving forward.

The tools of composition:

  • Leading Line - the 4 types of lines in an image that draw your viewer’s eyes through your image.

  • Texture - the texture of the surfaces in your image that give a 3D feeling to the image. Also to take into account the texture of your printed image.

  • Contrast - at its simplest definition, the difference between the light and dark portions of your image.

  • Frame - the way we select what we are photographing. Your frame is the edge of your image and there are two forms of framing.

  • Leveling vs sharpening - at its basic form, this is how calm vs chaotic your composition is.

  • Perspective/Vantage point - this encompases the angles from which you shoot along with where you are positioning our camera in relation to your subject.

  • Scale - the size difference between the objects in your images.

  • Positive vs Negative space - the way you fill the space or dont fill it, with your subject.

  • Color

  • White Balance - the way your camera sees the color of the light you are photographing.

  • Time - the way that ime is represented in your photo.

  • Focus - the spots of your image that have the most technical sharpness along with what your main emphasis is.

  • Plasticity - how 2D vs 3D we see an image.

We will be diving into leading line first. So come back later this week to see the next post. And keep up to date on my tiktok account to see the accompanying videos!