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Here’s a little assignment for the newbies out there this week.

Take a look at some of your recent photos.  What is the center of interest?  In other words, what is the most interesting aspect of the photo? (Here’s a hint:  usually, if it’s a portrait of a person, the center of interest is the face; if it’s a close-up of a person’s face, the eyes are usually the center of interest.)

Do you notice any trends about where in your photographs the center of interest is placed?

Don’t get me wrong, often, in portraits, it’s fine to center your subject’s face, but a more dynamic and interesting composition may be to to move the center of interest away from the center of the photograph.  The goal when creating an artistic photograph is to keep the viewer looking at it.  The viewer will start at one spot and move around the picture, sometimes resting in a certain spot, which is often the center of interest.

To try different compositions, think about the viewfinder on your camera. Which focus area is highlighted? Is it one spot in the center? Many beginners focus using that center box but they do not move the camera to re-compose after that.  You definitely want to focus on your center of interest but you might want to take it one step further.

One interesting composition style uses what is called the “Rule of Thirds”.

To illustrate the “rule of thirds”, imagine your image is divided up into thirds, both horizontally and vertically:

Now, pay special attention to the intersections of these lines, as marked by the red circles here:

To comply with the Rule of Thirds, you want your center of interest to be in one of these four spots.

Don’t know how to do that? Here is one way:

Here is way I prefer:

Use single-point focusing and move the focus point you see in the viewfinder to one of those Rule of Thirds intersections.

Here is another way:

1.   If your center of interest is a person, put the person’s eyes in the focus area of the camera.  (If the center of interest is not a person, put whatever is the center of interest in the focus area of your camera.)

2.   Hold the shutter button down half-way, which locks your focus. Move the camera slightly while holding the shutter button down half-way.  For people, I often move the camera down and to the right or left to get the person’s face higher in the frame. One caveat: to make sure you keep your image in focus when you re-position the camera, keep the lens on the same plane as it was when you focused; otherwise, you will be changing the distance from the lens to the object of your focus and risk an out-of-focus image.

3.   Press the shutter button down all the way to take the photograph.

Here is another way and the way I prefer:

1. Use single-point focusing and move the focus point you see in the viewfinder to one of those Rule of Thirds intersections.

(One note:  sometimes a setting on your camera will not allow the focus to be locked in this manner; in other words, when you re-compose the camera tries to re-focus, which is not what we want to do here.  The way to fix this problem was to change the focusing from continuous servo to single servo, but there might be other settings that cause this.  Consult your manual to find how to correct the problem.)

I often use the Rule of Thirds when composing headshots, like this one: