Simply put, composition is an arrangement of forms within the frame of the image. Artful photographic composition can express even a mundane subject in an exciting way. Good composition reflects your attention to detail.

In the days of film, composition was a skill that had to be acquired over time. You’d experiment with angles, lenses and subjects, wait for the film to come back from the lab, review your shots and then start the process all over again.

With digital cameras and their real-time LCD feedback, practicing the art of composition can be more fruitful, more quickly. Compared to squinting through optical viewfinders, using the LCD to frame your shot gives you a much better idea of how your image will look before you take it. It’s like looking at a miniature version of your final print. Plus, you can review your image right away and compare it to what you expected or wanted. If you’re not satisfied, you can try again right then and there.

Some things haven’t changed in photography. The same rules and ideas behind composition apply to digital photography as equally as they apply to film. Regardless of the recording medium, it’s the final image that counts, and the art of composition is fundamental to what and how that final image is going to communicate.

How can you make the most of the digital advantage in your compositions? Let’s talk about some ideas behind composition and consider digital cameras in that context.

1The Rule Of Thirds. This is a common concept in photography and other visual arts. The idea is to divide your frame into three equal sections both horizontally and vertically—something like a tic-tac-toe board. The intersections of the imaginary dividing lines are considered to be ideal areas of the frame in which to place your subject because these are the places where the viewer’s eye tends to rest.

Some people take the Rule of Thirds a bit too seriously perhaps, as it isn’t a hard and fast “rule” as the name suggests. Instead, it’s a good starting point for a pleasing composition as its application helps you to avoid the “bull’s-eye” syndrome (placing your subject in the center of the frame). Your digital camera’s big LCD makes visualizing the imaginary dividing lines and placing your subject a bit easier than when squinting through a viewfinder. A few digital cameras will actually superimpose the Rule of Thirds grid over your image as a menu option.

2 What’s Your Angle? Too often, photographers approach their subjects from an eye-level point of view. By this, I mean they stand straight up and photograph everything from their natural height. This consistent approach can result consistently in a dull images.

Break out of this two-dimensional mold with a conscious effort to find another angle on your subject. Get up above it or kneel down and shoot up at it. Doing this lets you look at your subject from a new perspective—maybe you’ll discover a more interesting relationship between your subject and its surroundings from a different angle.

Many digital cameras have flip-out, rotating LCDs, which make it much easier to try new angles because you can hold the camera up in the air or down by your knees and still see the LCD.

3 Points Of A Circle. Think of your subject as the center of a circle, and you, the photographer, as every point of the circle around it. Move around that circle and watch as the scene changes on your LCD. Your subject is a part of its context, and as you view it from different points on the circle, the subject and its context change.

The idea here is to explore as many ways as possible of expressing your subject in its environment because your first approach to the subject may not make the most of its surroundings. Once you take a photo of your subject that you like, find an entirely new way of photographing the same subject. Some of the shots will be more successful than others, but you can always delete the ones that don’t work.

4 Watch Your Edges. Many would-be terrific images are compromised by a stray element sneaking into the edges of the frame. Peering through a tiny optical viewfinder, you may miss a lone branch or half of someone’s arm creeping into your image. Using your camera’s LCD to compose your photographs helps because you get a larger view and stray elements are more easily noticed. Yes, you can always crop out unwanted elements later, but doing so means you’ll lose some of your image’s resolution.

LCDs also provide better coverage of the scene than most viewfinders. Optical viewfinders are nice to have when you need to save battery power or can’t see the LCD in bright sunlight, but these viewfinders often fail to accurately show what the lens is actually “seeing.” LCDs, on the other hand, are typically a very accurate representation of what the camera will record.

5 Get Close. Many photographs are taken too far from the subject. Maybe it’s because cameras seem intrusive, so photographers naturally and unconsciously keep a distance from their subjects. However, the final photograph is going to be more interesting for the viewer if the subject is prominent in the frame. Taking just a few steps toward your subject may dramatically improve your composition. Try it and watch how the image changes on your LCD.

Another way to get up close and personal with your subjects is to shoot Macro. Digital cameras have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for many photographers because of their Macro mode. Almost all digital cameras have this mode, which allows you to focus on subjects just a few inches or less from the lens. Film photographers have to buy a special lens to allow this, but digital photographers can try Macro photography with the push of a button.

6 Sublime Simplicity. The more concentrated and simple your photograph, the more visually appealing it’s likely to be. With busy scenes where a lot is happening, it’s hard to emphasize the geometry of the forms in the image. Simpler images will also tend to communicate better to your viewers, as there’s less to figure out when seeing the image for the first time.

You can simplify your image by getting closer to your subject or using your digital camera’s zoom lens at the telephoto end of its range. The latter has the additional benefit of diminished depth of field, which softens and blurs objects in the background, making them less distracting. If your camera allows you to manually select your aperture, you can choose a wide aperture like ƒ/2.8 to limit your depth of field.

7 Think Of Your LCD As A Print. If you’re accustomed to film cameras, you may think of the viewfinder as a mere sighting device. Imagine that your LCD is your final photograph, hanging framed on the wall, because what you see in the LCD is what you’ll get in the print.

Approaching your compositions in this way will help you to really see the whole, rather than the parts. It’s easy to only “see” your subject when composing an image, which can cause you to ignore the subject’s surroundings. Seeing the whole image in the LCD will help you better apply the other compositional ideas we’ve discussed here.