Composition rules

Composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art. This really forms the basic understanding of what’s going on onscreen through the use of shapes, textures, patterns and colours. We must ensure that all of these factors mesh together well enough se we can truly convey the meaning and mood of scene vividly. There are a few principles one must obey that govern the way visual element react to each other within a photograph frame. Once we have understood the basic principles we can then add new innovation to our photographs and inject more underlying meanings and effective imagery.

The Rule of Thirds
One of the most popular 'rules' when undertaking photography is the Rule Of Thirds. It is also popular amongst artists, so we must ensure this applies to our music album front cover and other promotional photos.
It works like this:
Imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically across the given frame. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect as it is said that these are the areas the eye automatically will flicker to.

As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things; third of the way up, third of the way in from the left, you get the idea. Duff places to put things; right in the middle, right at the top, right at the bottom, away in the corner.
Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced easy on the eye pictures. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of ' tiny subject surrounded by vast empty space' syndrome.

One last thing about the Rule of Thirds is that once you have got the hang of the Rule of Thirds you will very quickly want to challenge this. By challenging this you could challenge the stereotype and fool the audience as to who is the “evil” one. As I said earlier the rules are basically used as guidelines and if you can create a better image by making your own rules then this is very beneficial.
For our music video we really want to take the rule of thirds into account, especially as this is a new band. We want all of the target audience to be able to gain a clear understanding of the type of music the band will potentially be making, as soon as they pick the dig pack up.