"Photography Theory" Nine-grid Composition
- ChungT.
- Feb 14
- 3 min read
In this image-dominated era, everyone is eager to take a good photo. Excluding post-production and AI images, what exactly constitutes a good photo? How professional is the equipment? Highly technical lighting effects? The ability to manipulate the camera? These are just factors that make the photo further sublime and controllable, and taking a good photo has basically nothing to do with equipment and technology.
The composition of a photo can be roughly divided into: subject, composition, light, color, shape, foreground, background. Whether you are shooting portraits, landscapes, products, pets, spaces, activities, or empty moods, the first thing to do is to establish the subject. As long as you can set the subject of the shooting, people can understand what you are shooting.
Once you have determined the subject of the photo, you can make the picture more attractive through composition.
The general composition methods include:
nine-grid division, cross division, linear division, golden section, etc.
The nine-grid division method is relatively simple and easy to use, and most electronic cameras and smart phones have built-in this auxiliary composition method. Users can place the subject in the top, middle, bottom, left, middle, or right space of the picture to make the picture look balanced. For advanced users, try placing the subject at the intersection of each cross, which can make the subject more prominent.
After carefully observing the subject, find a way to highlight it. In the conventional composition method of the nine-square grid, you can use each blank space to set the space, and then add or reduce the objects in the space, which can make the subject more prominent and make the photo look more impactful. In real life, we are used to filling up space, just like the bookshelves at home. But from a photographic perspective, it is easier to exclude things from a space than to fill it up.
Try using a nine-grid composition, filling the middle grid with the subject, then expanding it to the grid below, the grid above, the grids on the left and right, and finally to the entire screen. You will find that as the proportion of the subject in the picture increases, the tension of the picture also increases. When you can make good use of the nine-grid composition method, the foundation of the photo will become solid and the photo will no longer look sloppy.
In addition to the nine-square grid composition method, there is also the more commonly used linear composition (straight lines, oblique lines, curves, arcs, intersecting lines, converging lines, etc.). There is no need to look for examples to learn basic composition. Posters, movies, television, artworks and other things in life can also be used as learning materials. For example, if you put the nine-square grid on famous paintings, you will find that most of them conform to their composition methods; or if you put the scenes where the protagonist of a movie appears on the nine-square grid, the protagonist will occupy one square in most long-distance shots, two squares in half-body shots, about three to four squares in close-ups, and even six to nine squares in extreme close-ups.
Through the elements in life, as long as we look more and pay more attention, our sense of composition will be awakened slowly.
