Good composition gives lives to photographs. Although an eye of good composition cannot really be taught per se, I can
share with you how I gained my intuition for good composition: I observed pictures taken by photography masters, and I
learned more by trial and error.
When I was preparing for this project, I spent some time browsing plenty of wedding photos from the Internet and books.
When I saw a good shot, I would ask myself the following questions to analyze the photo and reverse-engineer it:
• What elements make this picture good?
• What is in the background?
• How did they pose?
• How did the environment relate to the couple?
The next step was to try out and see what worked for us. After doing it for a while, my composition improved naturally.
I like to quote the New York Institute of Photography:
"As with any type of photograph, we start with NYI's Three Guidelines for Great Photographs. 1) You want to make sure
that your photo has an unambiguous subject. 2) You want to make that subject stand out and be clearly identified. 3) You
want to simplify the image so that nothing in it distracts from the subject."
This concisely sums up the art of composition.
Books and Internet resources
General Photography
› Nick Kelsh: How to Photography Your
Life
Kelsh shows us how to take great pictures even with a basic point-and-shoot camera. He used everyday example to show us
how to turn a mediocre photo into something that wows by changing the way you compose.
› www.photo.net
This site has been tremendously useful in this project. It is a site for serious amateur photographers. Some of the
members are no doubt professional. Simply browsing through their portfolios, I could learn a lot of interesting ideas.
There are also quality discussions going on in the forums, from which I learnt about an excellent film for outdoor
portraits — Kodak Portra NC 160.
Wedding Photography
As I browsed the net for inspirations, I found some excellent wedding pictures from these photographers:
› www.stephenswain.com
› www.jeffascough.com
› www.yervant.com
I also found two books on wedding photography that are particularly insightful and inspiring: