Subject Placement

By Steve Thomas
The Powerful Photograph Coach

As you go through these lessons you may well discover areas you want to learn more about. Here are some excellent e-books you can get that expand on your area of interest.

In this book I found many tips that helped improve my photography - they will help you too!

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Amy Renfrey does a fabulous job covering both the technical aspects of digital photography and the artistic aspects. Digital Photography Success is a great companion to this course as it covers the subjects in more detail than can be fit into a weekly lesson. Highly recommended!

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This book is an essential resouce to have if you ever were frustrated at the quality of your people pictures. I use techniquest I learned in this book whenever I take pictures of people.

A photograph can be designed to elicit desired emotional responses from viewers. An image communicates a message. A well-composed image will help communicate the message intended by the photographer. You see, there is always some sort or emotional response to a picture; usually that response is subtle and probably not really recognized as such by the viewer. As the creator of the image you have great control over where in the picture you place the main subject of the picture and any secondary subjects.

A picture can be divided into nine areas by using two vertical lines and two horizontal lines as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. Areas of a picture

The center of the picture is usually the weakest, most passive place to put a subject. When you place the main subject in the center of your picture, the message is that the subject is static, calm and unmoving. If you are taking a portrait this may be the right composition for certain subjects if you want to communicate stability, but if you want to communicate the dynamic qualities of the subject there are better locations to say that. For example if you are taking a portrait placing the face at the interesction of either left or right vertical lines and the upper horizontal line is more powerful and dynamic.

What I’m about to say applies primarily to people who read languages from left to right and top to bottom. I believe that exactly the opposite compositions would work best for people who read languages such as Hebrew that read from right to left. There are further differences for people who read languages such as Japanese that is commonly written vertically from the top of the page to the bottom. It would be best for readers of such languages to adapt the recommendations in this article to fit their culture.

I’ve labeled the areas in figure 1 to make referring to them easy. The left side of the picture is the arrival area and right side is the departure area (remember the way you read). The bottom of the picture is grounded or heavy and the top of the picture is light, airy, or flighty.

		The points where the lines cross are common placement points for the main subject of a picture. For example these two boys are placed at grid intersections UR and LL. The Disneyland sticker in LR is another important element of the picture. In another article I’ll discuss eye movement around a picture to show why the sticker is important.
		In this picture the boy is placed on the upper right intersection. The picture would have been stronger if I had moved a little to my left and squatted down to make the slide longer.
In this picture the placement of the airplane serves two important purposes. First, being near the bottom of the picture it shows that the plane is still heavy and earthbound and seconds, the airplane approaching the edge of the picture shows that it is moving fast. In the uncropped version of the picture the airplane is almost at the center of the frame, a position that doesn’t really communicate what is happening very well.

The placement of the sun in this picture at the right corner indicates sunset since it is on the “leaving” side of the picture. The tree covered islands act as a lower frame for the sunset to keep the eyes from wandering off the picture.

In the next lesson you will learn how to use leading lines and how to control how the eyes of the viewer move around your pictures.

Steve Thomas
The Powerful Photography Coach

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(c) Steve Thomas 2007-2010 All rights reserved. This is copywrited content and may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the author.