Photos can play an important role in marketing – on social media, your website, and other areas. The composition of your marketing photos in particular can make a world of difference to how effective they are, which is why you should carefully take it into account and take steps to improve on it.
While you may not be an experienced photographer, there are three easy tips that you can use to start improving the composition of your marketing photos:
- Use the rule of thirds
To use the rule of thirds you should turn on the grid on your camera or in your editor and align the subject and important elements using the gridlines and intersections. That will help you to balance the composition, while placing the subject off-center to make it more visually appealing and giving it space to breathe.
If you want to take it a step further you can consider the visual weight that each element has and how that affects the balance of your photos. That can make applying the rule of thirds a little more complicated, but it will definitely make for compelling results.
- Leave negative space
Never underestimate the importance of negative space – especially in marketing photos. Negative space is the space that exists between elements in your composition, and in many ways is an element in its own right.
If you make it a point to leave negative space, your marketing photos will look less crowded. More importantly the composition will be more minimal, which will allow you to focus the viewers’ attention on the subject more easily.
As an added bonus having ample negative space will ensure that you can easily add text to your photos – which is often going to be useful for marketing.
- Find the symmetry in your photos
Symmetry is appealing and people tend to be naturally drawn to it, so you should find and use it in your marketing photos. Regardless of whether it is vertical or horizontal symmetry, your photos will look more balanced with it as well.
The angle at which you capture marketing photos plays the biggest part in its symmetry. That is why you need to constantly be on the lookout for symmetry all around you, and make it a point to include it in your marketing photos.
While a big part of the composition will be decided when you capture your photos, post-production plays an important role as well. In particular it will enable you to fine tune the composition after the fact, and crop or remove blemishes from photos, or other elements that detract from it.
Make no mistake it can take a bit of experience before you are able to more easily decide on how to improve the composition of your marketing photos. That being said the tips listed above should give you an excellent place to start, and as soon as you apply them you should be able to see the impact they have.