Tutorial: Understanding Composition

It's difficult to define what a good composition can give to your scene. But it's easy enough to tell what a bad composition can do for your image instead. In one word, bad composition causes chaos. And we are in the business of bringing order.

This is the first of many workshop tutorials to come. They were initially produced at Nightnurse Images for internal educational purposes. We now share these with you to inspire you and allow you a glimpse into the magical world of image-making and visual storytelling.

Every image is organized into three layers of information. It's what we call the three pillars of the image: composition, value, and color. In this tutorial, we will study the first pillar, composition. You will learn about visual balance, image structure, focal elements, and how to guide the viewer's eyes where you want to in order to better communicate your idea and message. Every image should tell a story, and composition is a bag of tools that help you tell this story.

So, let's get to it! In this workshop tutorial, Nightnurse Images visualizer, Andreas Papastergiou, will guide you through the following:

• What’s in our toolkit?

• What is composition?

• The three stages of composition

• Five composition mistakes to avoid

• Resources

Enjoy!

Nightnurse Images - Understanding Composition

This video is a Nightnurse Images' production based on concepts from the Blender Guru and Chris Tulloch McCabe. Images used in this presentation are marked with image attribution on each individual image throughout the presentation.