 Today we are going to improve your compositional abilities in photography by looking at nine practical ways of crafting photographs by using the examples in the work of Steve McCurry. At the end of this video you can have a better understanding of how to recognise and use these self-same techniques in your own photos. How's it how's it? Learning composition in photography is really is a vital skill in improving your images but especially for the beginner photographer it can be extremely confusing. To keep things simple we're going to leave all the talk about figrids and fennabachi spirals to the textbooks who have their almost sterile images which seem to be created solely to illustrate their points but we're going to turn instead to that vibrant and gorgeous work that Steve McCurry has created throughout his career. This is going to inspire you to start seeing compositions which are all around you so long as you know what to look for. Fill the frame. This is probably the simplest compositional idea and it's just to really get as close to the subjects as you possibly can and fill the frame with them make it as explicitly clear to the viewer as to what exactly this image is all about especially with portraits it gives your images a real sense of impact. You can either do this by walking closer to the subject or possibly by using a longer lens. When you do this in your photography when you fill that frame in this composition then you are forcing the viewer to address the thing that it is that you're photographing. There is something about patterns that has an almost supernatural urge to draw us in. Anything that repeats or has a flow that more or less fills the frame holds our attention and when you do that you can really you know keep the viewer glued to the image because the eye is constantly seeking around looking for things and then once the eye thinks oh i'm quite happy and i'm quite quite safe here and this is this is nice break up the pattern break it with something unexpected and see how that elevates the image into something really powerful this is what Seth Gordon called a purple cow so try and find these purple cows in your photography something that leaps out of the viewer that they go wow i didn't expect to see that this is what patterns do repetition they lead us into a almost a sense of security and then we can use that purple cow to snap the person out of it and probably one of the first art techniques that you were taught when you were learning to draw was was leading lines you know those lines that draw the eyes that lead the eye to a place in the image they can give an image a sense of depth they can draw the the eye towards ideas and subjects that you want to you know to highlight they're all over the place in nature they can be man-made they can be natural they wherever you look you can find leading lines don't be afraid to use them none of these techniques are the hallmark of a of a of a novice or a noob nobody's going to laugh at you for using what are actually quite basic elements everybody uses them just embrace it see what you can come up with when you look at finding natural frames within a scene then you can start elevating your images into something a little bit more than just a snapshot for example it's a great way of highlighting again elements with this scene that you want to bring to the viewer's attention in a way that is not quite the same as when you get close and you fill the frame because then you can give the images or the subject a sense of context a sense of place you know you can you can bring some some flavor into the image and you can use frames within frames within frames the more that you learn to recognize and the more depth you can be at creating these little vignettes almost throughout all of your images that that the eye can be drawn to can you see how all of these things sort of build up that you can use them either individually or within like a context that you are layering ideas on top of each other and makes your photograph so much richer diagonals are much like leading lines but they have a lot more dynamic motion to them that they they really make the scene come alive in a way that often leading lines don't necessarily do because leading lines can be quite flat occasionally but diagonals start giving you so much more dynamic motion and they can also help walk the eye through a scene where you don't have necessarily this this sort of stereotypical sense of leading lines so look at this photograph here there isn't a you know there isn't really like a traditional leading line but the the diagonals draw your eyes through they're walking you through this alleyway and of course making you explore the image a lot more than you would if it was just kind of just a flat a flat scene now Steve McCurry does this a lot and it's what makes his portraits extremely direct that is it's almost almost i suppose you could call like a signature approach with portraits the eyes of his subjects connect with you even now when you're looking at them i want to probably a quite tiny screen they connect and they draw you in to the image they make you feel that this person is looking at you not the camera that they're really engaging and that that that's what really gives these these images a sense of power and especially when you consider going back to the first point about filling the frame that the people within them fill the frame there's nothing else that is distracting us from this this intense gaze that they're holding you with symmetry is one of those quirky little aspects of composition that often we're sort of told to avoid if you look at your television screen or films or what have you it's very rare that the subject is centered in the frame often it's off to one side and or third and all the other aspects that we've looked at in this video so far but don't be afraid to put your subject center to put them in a symmetrical environment because that way again you're drawing the eye and that's the whole point with composition is to draw the eye into aspects of the frame that you want them to look at symmetry isn't just a very static way of looking at things but it can also be extremely dynamic when you employ things like soft diagonal lines within it so long as they are symmetrical this for me seems to be the one aspect of these videos that i think you can really really get to grips with and and explore deeply that brings us to the rule of thirds it was going to show up eventually wasn't it you know this is probably the one that everybody knows that everybody uses it and and i think you know a lot of people kind of dismiss it because it is so basic is like the the go-to and it's really just you know about sort of dividing up the screen into various lines and putting points of interest on those intersections and using the lines within that rule of thirds to place important elements like the horizon and so on and so forth just because it is basic like all of these things that we have talked about don't dismiss it don't just say oh well i can't do it because it's a basic thing use it but don't overly rely on it don't fall back to it the whole time and think well that's enough because i've done a rule of thirds see how you can add in some of the other elements that we've talked about in this video the compositional photography tools that you're learning to elevate it to something a bit more i know you can do it because you know it's there there are no real rules by all means you know take some of the examples that we've looked at today you know employ them in your own photography see what you can learn from them and take those lessons you know put them into your own photography but feel free to experiment these are not hard and fast rules go run with it see where it takes you see what feels right for you this is what photography is all about and that's probably the best compositional tip that i can give you is that does this feel right for you a great way of practicing composition in photography is to actually indulge in minimalist photography for a little bit and i put a video together talking about just this very point here which i'm sure that you'll find absolutely interesting thank you ever so much for watching and i will see you again soon