 There was a study done by Princeton University that said it only takes a tenth of a second for someone to decide whether or not you are good looking. This also applies to your photography and is one of the reasons why it is so important that your photographs make the best use of that first impression. How's it? How's it? Great photographs are the ones that leap off the page immediately and connect with you. They do this because the photographer is making specific choices about compositional ideas in their photographs to make that image the very best that it can be. To help you catch the viewer's eye I'm going to share with you some great ways that you can take these compositional elements and give your photographs this immediate impact. Photography is a two-dimensional thing. It's a flat image and one of the ways of helping to bring depth into your images is framing. This is an extremely easy technique to understand because all you really need to do is to take various elements within the frame and to use other elements to frame it. When you start doing this not only do you draw attention to those areas of the image but you can use frames within frames within frames. This gives your photograph an added depth. Often photographers fall under the misapprehension that framing is only really about sort of physical things that you can see you know window frames door frames archways that kind of you know effect but you can also use color in addition to light and shade to frame areas of your of your image. The next time you're out photographing look at the word around you look how you could possibly frame the thing that you would like to photograph to give it a little bit more visual interest a little bit more sort of added depth. Just this simple approach is going to elevate your photography from about 90% of the other images that people see on a regular basis. No doubt you are familiar with the term rules of third you know I mean if any video talks about composition you use that talks about the rule of thirds and you know that's when you take the image you divide it up into three horizontal sections and three vertical sections then place the subject on one of those intersections but a far more interesting use of lines in photography are leading lines and this is where you have a line that's either imaginary or physical that draws the eye through the image often settling on subject that will then stop the eye in its travels. Now you can either do this in a very basic level using obvious things like you know stack of shelves in a supermarket or you can use light which will give your images an even more dramatic look. The examples that you've seen here so far are all fairly obvious uses of leading lines but look at these three photographs the lines aren't immediately obvious but take a moment and you'll see how your eyes draw naturally through the image and in the case of the child lying on the floor with the rainbow mat see how the lines create a whole circle which keeps your eye traveling around within the frame. When used correctly symmetry in photographic composition can be extremely effective at making a photograph stand out from the crowd the key to great symmetry is to keep the subject simple don't over clutter the frame because when you do you add too much visual noise to your images the goal with all of these elements is to get people to look at your photograph and that's what you want to do you don't want to sort of be giving them subtleties draw them in somehow and then they can explore the subtleties hiding within your frame and symmetry is a great way of doing this of hiding the obvious in plain sight now you can achieve symmetry either through digital means or by focusing on shape within the object that you are photographing. What I really enjoy about symmetry is that we look at photographs and we're not quite sure what the object is originally you know so we kind of like oh you know what is what is this and it's only when we look closer that we begin to recognize and we go hi we think we're so clever because we figured out what it is so that's an effect that you can bear in mind when trying this kind of photography and you know minimalist photography really lends itself quite nicely to this and a great example is this photograph of a squirrel it's a wonderful squirrel but it's more about timing than it is about symmetry and the reason that I prefer the torso picture over the squirrel is that the torso is not immediately obvious what it is there was only one thing within the frame that is drawing our attention through its symmetry whereas the squirrel there's lots of other things going on so that squirrel doesn't have the same sort of impact for me that the the torso does. Contrast and a cousin who we'll talk about later on never really seem to get the love that they deserve within photographic composition but they are both extremely effective tools when you are learning and improving your visual language much like leading lines draw the eye because of their man-made feel in a natural world contrast also captures our eyes because it's not something we often see when looking at the world without a camera. Contrasting light and shade is is one way obviously of creating contrast but you can also contrast colour these are all ways of of arresting the eye they have a visual appeal but also a lack of contrast can draw your viewers in so you don't really need to always have like super contrasty images to actually use contrast to your advantage in a previous video i talked about the benefit of actually using contrast when photographing in colour and that is when you put a colour against a darker colour or darker part of the the image the colour itself has more pop has more vibrance look at these two examples look at how the orange in these photographs absolutely jumps out of you because it is contrasted against both a dark green and a dark gray there is a line from a movie which if you know what it is let me know in the comments which is always stuck with me repetition works david repetition works david this is especially true in photography and where you have the ability with your camera to compress elements to bring in ideas that you wouldn't normally be able to see and place them in relationship that we wouldn't really appreciate until we see it as a photograph and because of that relationship because of that repetition of pattern it makes the image all the much stronger much like you know when you have the colour and the contrast of brighter colours when you have multiple shapes of the same thing then you are injecting something slightly different in there which is like a curveball that gets thrown into the view and then they stop they go oh my god look at this photograph you know there's this field of brown penguins and we kind of go brown penguin brown and then oh look there's a white penguin there's an emperor emperor penguin yes so standing there so you know our eyes are kind of filling in the blanks of the pattern as it were and then going oh there's something else you can also use shapes in a similar way you know when you have these these shapes they don't necessarily create a repeating pattern but you as a viewer get more comfortable about seeing the shape or what have you and then you go oh there's something different there or the shapes can create another shape using negative space and we'll talk about negative space in a few minutes so when you're out and about photographing things constantly look for shapes look for patterns look for things that repeat and think about how you can use them in your photographs to make something that sticks out to the viewer so they are drawn in to looking at your photograph that brings us neatly onto filling the frame you know the frame is something that a lot of us are you know we're aware of obviously but you know we but we often don't use it to its fullest extent much like you know the the camera has the ability to show us patterns and ideas and things like that that we don't see with our natural eyes so too can we sort of draw attention to to an object by filling it in you know filling it in the frame it is so powerful and it is so effective because it gives us a chance to focus on one thing and one thing only which of course we can't do without a camera I love that this approach to photographing things can lead obvious object an almost abstract quality look at this horse photograph this is beautiful you know and how many people would think to photograph a horse like this to break it down to look at you know just a one part it makes it both like almost sculptural and yet also also also abstract completely these kind of photographs will set you apart from that person who's just taking the casual snapshot because you are taking the time to mind the scene in front of you for all of its photographic possibilities sometimes it can feel like it's a cliche being so close in you know filling the frame with a face but so what give it a try you know if you're looking for easy quick ways to give your photographs an impact and you're just starting out nothing could be more impactful than just a face connecting with the subject another way of making your subject stand out is to photograph them with a wide aperture so that means if you're not familiar with the phrase wide aperture to open up your lens as as wide as it can go so it's letting in as much light as possible and then the effect of this is that it reduces the depth of field give you that kind of blurry background that these days seems to be kind of the remit of every phone camera filter manufacturer but real depth of field real depth of field has a quality to it that gives your images depths that those filters just don't they don't do and it will draw the viewer into the subject because that's what we want we want the viewer to interact with the subject and one of the reasons this happens with the shallow depth of field is not only we separating the the object from the background but the eye itself our eyes are drawn to the sharpest part of an image so for example when the face is the only sharp part of an image not only we draw into the person's eyes but we are also drawn to it because it is sharper it's such a subtle thing and this is probably why this kind of look is is extremely popular on places like instagram but don't dismiss it because it's a you know it's a common theme there it's really it's it's about getting more of this depth and I think this is one of the things that is so important is that you think about depths in your photographs to make them feel three-dimensional because we are limited to the fact that it is actually just at the end of the day two-dimensional images out of all the elements that we're looking at today this is the one that does actually require some vaguely specific pieces of gears now you know like a kit zoom lens often you know their apertures are like kind of f4 f5.6 and these won't really give you this effect of this the shallow depth of field in a way that you do with say like a faster lens like an f2 or 1.4 now a cheap option to to get this then is to go out and buy a very basic 50 millimeter prime lens for your camera negative space is a term that's thrown around a lot in photographic composition but I don't think anybody is ever really talking about what it is you know why do we actually use it leading lines pattern symmetry all these kind of things are designed to lead the eye around the frame to draw it where we want it to go to keep it active so it's staying on the photograph but the true purpose of negative space is to actually give the eye a place to rest a little bit of a break right and it's a lot more subtle because of that than of the other elements we're talking about in this video so if you have a really energetic subject then including some negative space can stop the viewer from feeling overwhelmed from shouting down to oh no it's too much I'm going to look at the next picture it just gives it a breathing space so it creates a sense of depth psychologically you sort of feel rather than physical depth because unlike when you're asked to fill the frame and you you have to confront the subject with negative space your eye can rest it can come back to the subject and then go rest again a little bit so it creates a very subtle visual loop you can also add a bit of a stillness to the image a common quiet place that's often you look at these photographs and you say you know I can just sit with this for a little moment those unsung heroes that we were talking about earlier well shadows are the second one and that is you know the absolutely out of all of the things we talked about shadows they can do it all and they can create contrast they can create patterns they can create repetition and create negative space if you can do it shadows can do it right and and yet people are afraid to use shadows why why is there this modern obsession with capturing as much detail across the entire tonal range of a photograph as is possible right and maybe this is because or maybe this is why people are falling out of love with shadows but if you start to use a when not if you are going to start using them it's going to immediately change the way your photographs look and they feel some of the most eye-catching arresting images that I've been seeing from people recently when doing the mentoring sessions that I offer is with images that have a strong shadow at the heart of them that you know it adds up so much into making a very impactful photograph probably because a lot of people don't use shadows so like a lot of things we've talked about that you know shadows are tricky because we don't often see them with the natural eye because obviously our eyes are always adjusting for you know to the exposures of what we see so when you start using shadow you're going to be photographing the world as the way that a photographer sees it as opposed to somebody who just you know takes a phone snap without really thinking about it for better or worse in the modern world we have such a short window of opportunity to get people to connect with your photographs the photographs that you have been looking at so far all award winners in various photographic competitions now irrespective of how you feel about competition in photography all of these images share a common theme and an idea and that's that they had enough of an impact to stand out amongst the thousands of entries that they were up against and they did this by using these compositional elements properly the next time you're out take these ideas combine them in your own unique ways just use one focus on something but use them use them with purpose and intent and they will make your photographs far stronger and they will give them far more impact thank you ever so much for watching and i'll see you again soon