Any discussion of composition can lead to trouble. No matter how many rules and analytic techniques you devise or learn, there will always be some wonderful images that break the rules, and some ho-hum images that are perfectly composed. It’s dangerous to over-intellectualize about a subject that is, at its core, subjective and emotional.

Does this mean that we should not bother to learn about composition, and just shoot what we intuitively feel will make good images? Not at all. Compositional guidelines are generally very helpful in setting up a photo; they are right far more often than they are wrong. There’s an important balance to be struck here. Perhaps Robert Bringhurst said it best in the in the introduction to his The Elements of Typographic Style, when he wrote

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.

I don’t believe it’s possible to break the rules well if you don’t learn what the rules are first. In addition, it’s probably best to break the rules deliberately, well, and one at a time. Which leads us to another Dangerous Dichotomy: learn the rules of composition, but don’t always follow them. Balance the requirements of the general, analytic rules with the specific, emotional elements of the individual image.

For the following discussion, we’ll take a trip to photo fantasy land, where we can imagine whatever scene, or whatever compositional elements we need, and arrange things so that they illustrate the important compositional concepts. The real world is not so simple, but you can move around or you can change the focal length of your lens to control the composition.

The most talked about, and maybe even the most useful, rule of composition is called The Rule of Thirds (ROT). It is very helpful in determining placement of strong vertical lines, and of the horizon line or other horizontal elements. First, imagine the frame divided into thirds, using two vertical lines, as in this figure:

Generally, the composition works best if your strongest vertical element is on or near one of those thirdsy lines. Let’s say you’re shooting landscapes in an open woodland. Following the ROT, you place the trunk of a large tree on one thirdsy line, like this: