I feel like composition is my biggest problem as of right now, I've been trying to keep the rule of thirds in mind to help me, are there any other such things to help improve composition?
Rule of thirds is a good place to start, but every time you take a picture you need to think of it in terms of lines. Here, I've meticulously prepared the following helpful guide in order to help you become a better photographer because I'm a bro like that, or something.
So here's a picture of mine with the rule of third overlaid on it. OK cool, the horizon is on the upper third and everything is pretty level. I sort of wish the mountain's peak was on the right upper third, but that would've thrown the horizon off the third and I think if I made the shot any wider or moved it to the right, I would've brought in something that cluttered the shot. I can't remember, I shot it in February.
Let's take a look at the major lines in the picture.
Cool, right? That's where the most distinct separations between texture happen, since this is a B&W. If this were in color you can also have divisions between different colors form lines, shadows form lines, and just straight up edges form lines. You could have a lot of fun with this if you were an architectural photographer, or just doing it with architectural photography. In fact, architectural photographers have to be really, really concerned with all of this.
Anyway, those were the major lines and from here you can sort of break it up into minor lines.
Keep in mind, when I say "lines" I mean things that break up the flow of a composition. Like, you see lines of shadows on the road and some bits of tree in the sky, but those, in my opinion, don't really break up the flow of the picture. However, the tree on the right breaks up the line of the road (we'll get to that later) and all those trees are vertical lines that break up the horizon line. This isn't good or bad in and of itself, and it's hard to control it (usually) while you're shooting, but you should keep it in mind.
So, from this, you should keep the rule of thirds in mind. Not only should your subjects and horizons, etc., be on the thirds, but you should just kind of keep in mind where the lines in your picture go relative to the thirds. For example, you see the top bit of the road starts on the bottom third. It's not like I planned this out meticulously, but you should crop your pictures afterwards and try to line things like this up.
So, when you're taking a picture, I stuff you not, you should be thinking of the world like you see above (with the rule of thirds on top, I forgot to add that in the drawing above). If you think that's hard, it is, and that's a good thing. It's what separates bad photographers from good ones, and it's what will TRULY make a picture good (not whatever lens you use, but that's another point.)
The extension of this is the path your eyes take through the picture, which is something that's even harder to develop than looking at the "lines" in a picture. A great picture has elements that hold your eye in the picture, and prevents lines that go off of the frame from having your eyes leave with it. This is why having like, half of a person or half of an anything being cut by the frame looks bad. It draws your attention to the edge of the frame and you sort of meander away form the subject. I'll talk more about this with the next example.
soz here's another one of my pictures. You'll notice that this is very flat, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's all about how you come at it.
This picture doesn't have a terribly high amount of lines, and that's a pretty good thing (there is no clutter at all, everything that's in that picture is in there because I wanted it in there). The red line is the only third that directly lines up, the bottom third. One thing that's nice about this picture is that there's depth going away from the point of observation. The piles of gravel are layered give a sense of depth within the picture. So it's not entirely "flat", which, you know, if a picture is
entirely flat, with no depth or perspective, it might as well be an abstract painting.
One of the kickers about this picture, though, is those two trees.
The two trees balance out the picture very well. They are equally spaced across the center (or at least visually close) giving a sense of symmetry and balance, and what's better, they are the only vertical elements in a very horizontally dominated composition, so they go a long way in a compositional sense.
Another thing to keep in mind is your center lines. It's usually bad to put your subjects on a center line, but putting other lines on the center can really make them stand out. Here's a good example. I didn't check to make 100% sure exactly where the center lines were but I'm sure I spent plenty of time on it when I was editing it to make sure it was in the center.
The church is in absolute dead center, along with the horizon (roughly) and this calls attention to how it's... sort of in the middle of a field. It's also helped along by being framed by that notch in the mountains and me shooting it dead on. I had to stand on top of the car for 20 minutes with my girlfriend in the car frustrated while I waited for the sun to come out to get this shot, lol.
Anyway, here's the "photographer vision" picture of the second pic.
You'll see there are no leading lines, but as long as you shoot something that you want to be flat basically head on, then there's no perspective created and no need to worry about that, really, unless you really want to emphasize depth, which is another matter entirely.
It's also worth noting that with all these techniques, it shouldn't necessarily make taking pictures easier, or make you turn out a lot of good pictures. If anything, it helps you compose an already interesting subject, and very occasionally it helps you turn a boring or average subject into a good picture through interesting composition, but more than anything this way of thinking about lines should help you weed out boring or poorly composed pictures. One of the most important skills of a photographer is being able to only display your best work, so this should help identify what is your best work.
And that, is how you get good at composition.
