Article Response: "9 Composition Techniques That Will Make Your Images Eye-Catching on a Biological Level"

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    Ah, yes, photography !! One of my favorite things to do in my spare time, besides film and edit videos. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, but what is it that makes a picture worth a thousand words? It's composition, mostly. It's what makes a photo eye-catching and interesting to an audience. Most photos and paintings you see in an art gallery at least have one of these composition rules present.

    First is the Rule of Thirds. It's one of the most well-known rules and isn't that hard to accomplish. All that needs to be done is having a subject placed along one or more of the four intersections created by imaginary horizontal and vertical lines. Leading Lines are also imaginary lines, also known as vertices, that lead the viewer's eye into your image. An example of this would be railroad tracks. Similar to this, Diagonals are also vertices that lead the viewers eye across the image, rather than into.

    Framing is usually more visually interesting when the frame is natural, for example, foliage or windows, to focus in on a certain subject. Figure to Ground sounds complicated, but it's actually just contrast between one subject and the background, which creates depth. Fill the Frame can be used to get up close to a subject and see all of the little details that you wouldn't be able to see from farther away. Also, "the bigger it is, the more important it is."

   Center Dominant Eye means cropping a photo so the subject's dominant eye is in the middle of the photo. This can give the illusion that their eye is following you. Patterns and Repetition can easily attract viewers to an image, and breaking the pattern or interrupting it with some other element can make it even more visually appealing. Lastly, Symmetry is having one side of a subject mirror the other side. Humans are just naturally attracted to both patterned and symmetrical images, which has been studied many times before in the past. Something about them just keeps us interested.

    Most of this was review for me, however, I did learn a bit more about certain techniques that I haven't heard of, like Center Dominant Eye and Diagonals. I might try these out in future photos! Maybe even in videos? If it can work with photos, why not with films? I'll have to test it out sometime.