Composition is the trickiest thing to master. It’s good to fully understand the technical details like exposure length, aperture size, ISO, focussing, HDR, filters and use of flash - but if you are taking badly composed pictures, you may as well throw all your equipment in the bin.
Composition has been hard for me to learn - I’m not a natural artist, and knew nothing about it when I started becoming seriously interested in photography. I bought many books and read many sites and practised, practised, practised - until I finally had some idea of how to pull it off.
It’s still difficult - I don’t think you ever stop learning about composition. Often a picture I think will be amazing when I am taking it (even if I can see it on live-view on the back of the camera) looks amazingly dull when I get it into the computer and see it on the big screen, and sometimes the opposite happens.
The best advice for those unsure of composition is TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOGRAPHS. Bring them home, suck them into your computer and go through them. Even if you haven’t got a natural eye for photography, when you are looking through the images some should strike you as more appealing than others. When you find one that does, try and work out why. Consult the rules of composition you will find here and all over the web, and see if you have accidentally followed one - that should help you to realise that they are worth knowing.
As I try to explain in the individual tutorials, these “rules” to be used and ignored where you see fit. They are best used as a hint to what compositions to try when you are out in the field (or in a church, or an airport!) - if at a loss for what to take, think of a rule and take some photos using it. You may be happy with the results!
I’ll try and add to these on a regular basis. For now we have:
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