Composition Digital Field Guide

Introduction

There are a lot of photography books on the market today; I should know since I have written three others and been involved as an editor on a half dozen others. There are even a few that are specifically geared to help you improve your composition, but what I noticed about most of these is they talked in generalities. While they all want to help you find your vision, they don't really give you a solid starting point. I hope to change that with this book.

Let me be upfront with you right now, this book is not for everyone. There are some of you out there who don't really need this type of book. You already have your own style, and you really like the image you take. You are happy with the composition and are probably following a lot of what is laid out here without even knowing it.

This book is for the photographer who is frustrated, frustrated that they can't seem to get a great photo. You take plenty of good photos, but you are wondering why they just don't seem to be great. Now, please don't page through the book expecting every photo in here to be great; some of the photos in this book are here to illustrate a point or are part of a before-and-after series.

In the first chapter, I discuss focal lengths, lenses, the basics of picking the right focus point along with the basics of recomposing images, and even the differences between the full-frame sensors and the cropped sensors so prevalent in today's digital cameras.

Next in Chapter 2 is an overview on light and the ...