Of all the articles I’ve written about underwater photography over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever written about composition. I don’t devote days of lectures to it when I teach my photo courses. In fact, my composition lecture is one of the shortest ones: Just feel it. Just do it.

Ansel Adams eloquently stated, "Photography is a language … consciously or intuitively we create our statement of the external world within the limitations of the medium employed." For me, the "intuitive" part trumps the conscious application of compositional rules. Furthermore, underwater photography has far more limitations than most other visual mediums, making teaching composition all the more nebulous. Yet, within the constraints of our chosen visual medium, some photos are obviously better than others. That may be because of subject selection, creative lighting, minimizing backscatter, maximizing color, or any other myriad synchronistic variables that all fell into place the moment the shutter snapped. These are the technical issues that have to be mastered to consistently deliver stellar underwater photos. But, inspired composition elevates those photos with technical mastery, lifting them beyond the mundane to the level of art.

Rule of Thirds

This is the best known of all compositional rules, and perhaps the most instinctive. If you divide a photo into thirds, horizontally and vertically, place the subject of interest at a point where the thirds cross. In the photograph of the tiger shark (opposite page), the eye of the shark, clearly the primary subject, falls at the intersection of the upper left third. I can’t say that I consciously thought this would be a perfect application of a specific rule. It was an instinctive capture of a quickly moving subject. Yet, it succeeds because it follows a rule that feels right when a viewer processes visual information.

Disappearing Lines Leading to Corners

If there are strong lines in a scene, the composition will benefit if they lead to a corner. The logic here is that if the line breaks more to the center it tends to divide the photo. The gorgonian at left leads to the lower right corner of the frame, offering visual balance to the hawkfish pointing in the opposite direction. Unlike the quickly moving moray eel at right, the gorgonian was a stationary subject that allowed me to take multiple shots and play with various compositions. The image with the disappearing line proved the most powerful of the series.

"S" Curves

Compositionally, "S" curves are difficult to replicate underwater. Topside shooters have roads and rivers to lead the viewer’s eye to a primary subject at the other end of an S, but underwater shooters don’t regularly find naturally occurring alphabetic shapes. The moray and diver (p. 39) provide some semblance of the S figure, while the wire coral (p. 38) does double duty, contributing both an S and a disappearing line.

Movement into the primary portion of the frame

It is visually disconcerting to look at the primary subject, to follow its gaze or implied motion to the edge of the frame, with distracting secondary subjects or action behind the primary subject. That’s why photographers always try to allow fish "room to swim" when composing the shot, placing the rear of the subject at the edge of the frame and leaving open space in front of it, as I’ve done with the great white shark in the shot to the left. The fact that the shark gave me a bit of an S curve and a Rule of Thirds composition is all the better.

Jim Church on composition

One of the most comprehensive analyses of composition in underwater imaging comes from the late Jim Church in his text Essential Guide to Composition. This is a cogent and timeless book that remains an extraordinarily useful educational reference. Church discusses human information processing in terms of what attracts a viewer to a photograph. Listed here are his six primary elements of good photo composition.

• Brightness
• Color
• Contrast
• Sharpness
• Action
• Eyes