Improve Your Photo Compositions with Shapes

To master composition, one must learn to recognize, and establish relationships between, shapes (also known as forms). Shapes fill the space within the image frame and are the building blocks of image design. Our world contains a seemingly never-ending array of shapes (such as lines, curves, triangles, squares, spirals, rectangles, and circles). Learning how to recognize, identify, and work with all of these shapes—and, more critically, to find a way to make shapes work together —is fundamentally important to creating successful compositions.

The video below will show you exactly how to put these ideas into practice in the field. You’ll see real world examples of bold, simple shapes working together to create dynamic compositions, and you’ll learn how to recognize and use those shapes to strengthen your own photography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiy2t_pIlbE

If you have any trouble watching the video above, you can also watch it here. 

Shapes aren’t just created by objects (such as trees, boulders, bears, and the like)—they can also be created by the interplay of light and shadow, by the interaction of several objects, or by areas of color.

You must not think of a tree as a tree, but rather as a vertical line; a mountain is not a mountain, but instead is a triangle; and so on. Learning to visualize in the abstract is the key to successfully recognizing shapes and then, in turn, creating a structured and harmonious relationship between those shapes.

Our world is visually chaotic, and our brains have evolved to deal with that chaos by simplifying that incoming information and reducing things to something more manageable to deal with. Shape-based composition is designed to help this process along; by incorporating simple, bold shapes into your photographs, you give the viewer a sense of coherence and order. At the same time, shapes can guide the viewer to important parts of the composition. That's why, when working with shapes, you should be looking for simple shapes, such as lines, triangles, spirals and radials, circles, zigzags, and curves.

Patterns

Effective images can also be made using a repetition of shapes, otherwise known as patterns. Patterns in nature are fairly common and can include things like a grove of trees, rippled sand, lichens on a rock, distant mountain ridges, a field of wild flowers, a flock of birds, or pebbles on a rocky shore. Since people find patterns so appealing, patterns are even more commonly found in the places that have been sculpted by human hands; rural and urban areas alike abound with examples of humanity’s excessive need to organize.

Patterns can take many forms. Some can be uniform, with essentially the same identical shape repeating over and over. Others may be less structured and not nearly as repetitive. Also, the pattern itself can be the primary subject of the composition, or the pattern can form the background structure of the composition, helping to guide the viewer through the image.

Conclusion

Ultimately, mastering composition isn’t about memorizing rules. It’s about learning to see differently. When you stop seeing trees, mountains, and rivers literally and begin seeing them as abstract shapes your creative control will expand dramatically. The world is already full of compelling shapes. Your job is to recognize them, simplify them, and arrange them in a way that guides the viewer’s eye with purpose.