Photography Composition - 12 Composition Rules for Your Photos to Shine By James Carren

ackground are always mentioned, but seldom is midground. Don’t forget that you have
your whole frame to use, and you should try to fill it all with points of interest so that the
viewer’s eye doesn’t just get stuck at the foreground. Even if your first instinct may be to
put your main subject in the foreground, consider taking a shot or two where they step
back just enough to be considered midground. Or even, hide your main subject in the
background and allow your viewer to discover it, not be hit over the head by it.
Now, if you are using a shallow depth of field, you may wonder why you need points of
interest in the midground and background. They won’t be in focus so what’s the point,
right? Well, sometimes having that little shadow of something lurking in the background,
be it a cabinet or another person, can be enough to pique the interest of a viewer.
Sometimes, a photograph is not just about the main subject at all.
The nice thing about depth of field, too, is that you can change it from sharp to shallow or
vice versa and still have the same exposure time as you did before. These are called
equivalent exposures. You just adjust your aperture, and then change the shutter speed
accordingly so that your camera is still allowing the same amount of light into the lens.
And voila! Same exposure, different depth of field.
You’ll probably find, over time, that you like a certain style of depth of field more than the
other, and that’s okay. That, in part, will develop into your own personal aesthetic.