The "Golden Triangle"

Lately I've been harping on about photo composition so I thought I'd keep up the theme whilst posting a photo of Hive account@krystalfinnigan that I love.

Even though it's a simple photo I think her hands and shirt really make it work. When I was framing up the shot I did my best to make use of the golden triangle composition to help make the photo more visually appealing.

This is based on the idea that if you draw a diagonal line through the photo with an adjacent line reaching out to the other corners of the frame the eye is naturally drawn to the points where they meet. Like shown below.

Now when taking photos its one thing to have this compositional idea in mind but its another thing all together to capture it in the moment.

After taking the shot and importing it to my computer I was happy with the result. I've drawn up the triangle over the photo to help illustrate the point, but when I did...

I realised I was a little bit off the 90 degree tangent haha. Ideally Krystal's hands and face would have met right where the lines do, but it wasn't quite right. You can't win them all though and you know what they say about practice.

I was originally inspired to make this photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

He took this photo of his wife while she was reading, her crossed legs forming a great example of the golden triangle.

I think it's important to remember that these composition techniques I've mentioned in my previous posts are just techniques, they don't have to be followed to make a good photo. But if your out there shooting and want to try and apply these methods keep those little diagonal lines in mind when framing up a shot and get creative with your compositions!

Here is a bonus photo that I love by Henri, it's another great example of this technique.