Photography Foundations: Composition

- Hi, my name is Ben Long, and welcome to Foundations of Photography, Composition. How many times have you come back from shooting and looked at your images and thought, "Wow, this one really works," and, "This one really doesn't." Sometimes an image doesn't work because of a technical problem. It's blurry, or your hand's in front of the lens or something, but more often, an image works because of how it's composed. Much more than technical understanding or ability, composition is what separates the good photographers from the not so good photographers, and in this class we're going to cover in depth all of the fundamental building blocks of composition.

You're going to examine lots of compositional concepts that you can use no matter what kind of subject matter you're shooting. We're going to explore the process of seeing and look at some techniques to get your visual sense working in a new way. Light is the beginning of all photos. Without good light, it's hard to get good results, but light can also be a subject unto itself and an essential tool for achieving good compositions, so we'll be exploring light in detail. Improving your composition skills is not just a process of learning how to compose. You also need a vocabulary for discussing composition and an understanding of how to look at your own images with a critical eye, so to that end, we'll be performing lots of compositional analysis of my images, as well as the work of three other photographers and an entire class full of students, and finally, we're going to spend time talking about shooting practices, what you need to do in the field to get access to the subject matter you want and how to improve your chances of coming back with a good shot.

We've got a lot of material to cover and a lot of ideas to explore, so come with me now as we dive into the fundamentals of composition.