5 Essential Rules for Drone Photo Composition: Read this if you are a Beginner

In the Drone Photography Bussines you have to Learn Composition

I started shooting with an old Canon T-60. Found it in our house library. It was my stepdad’s camera, but he hasn’t touched it in some years and she has accumulated some layers of dust, remembering better times in travels all over the world.

As soon as I had the chance I stole it, cleaned it and bought a couple of 35mm film boxes. She only had one lens: the faithful nifty-fifty, 50 mm 1.8

I was 13 years old at the time. All the 72 pictures of those first two boxes of film were absolutely ruined. When the guy at the photographic lab saw that, he had some compassion on his heart and started giving me some tips, you know, on how not to throw my money down the drain. Later I learned that my favorite film was the Ilford HP5.

Things like how to open and close the diaphragm, when and how to use different films speeds (ISO), how to check exposure with the integrated exposure meter on the camera, to take off the lens cap before shooting (this last one was the hard to remember, even today sometimes I still forgot to take it  off).

And those were my first photographic lessons, a long time ago.

• Rule number one: think before you shoot.
• Rule number two: better to underexpose than overexpose.
• Rule number three: Always take the lens cap off!

We had good times. You had to remember your shutter speed and f-stop too for when developing the film and before you could see the actual print. Only then did you find out if you screwed up or made a piece of art. Sort of hit and miss in the beginning.

Later, after years of shooting with the T-60, specifically in 2006 I got my first DSLR: the Nikon D70. 6.1 megapixels of immediately-visible-to-check images. And the legendary F mount, thanks to it you could have 40-year-old lenses and use them on modern cameras. It was a very, very long road, but the knowledge accumulated fast.

My biggest lesson

My most significant lesson was that while I possessed technical knowledge after shooting hundreds of film rolls with the Canon, a technically correct and well-exposed picture could be devoid of value if it lacked soul, narrative, and spark.

Nowadays, 14.000.000.000 technically correct, and probably well-exposed images are uploaded daily to social media.

That’s fourteen thousand million images.

Every 24 hours.

Let ‘s sink that in.

Of those 14 billion images, how many really transmit a message?

Our cell phones and drones are really good at making images. But did they only “show” or do they “tell” something?

And that’s why I tell you this… Your drone can’t compose in your name.

If you want your pictures , you have to take this bull by the horns. Today, you are going to learn basic composition so you can start telling better stories with your camera drone.

First of all, you have to remember that the basic visual expressions are dots and lines. With dots and lines you can create anything. So when you are up there you have to start to decompose what you see into dots and lines.

Now that you see everything into simpler expressions, it’s easier to start exploring different rules that will help us to make our images more attractive to the human eye.

One of the first rules that everyone uses (and sometimes abuses) is the famous rule of thirds. Famous because most cameras and drones have already included on the screen modes a layout that help us to use.

The basics behind the rules of thirds is that if you divide your screen in 9 rectangles of equal size the four center intersections are going to be the spots where you should position your subject because are the  it allows space for the subject TO GET CONTEXT and the eyes search first into those positions.

I like the rule of thirds because it forces me to give “breathing space” for my subject.

Remember: nobody can enforce these rules, but first you should learn the rules as a professional so you can break them like an artist.

Symmetry and Balance

Another basic rule that’s important to see in drone photography is the one regarding to symmetry and balance.

Many drone photos that respect the rule of thirds lack balance. You need to keep checking out if your photo is balanced to one side or another. Sometimes a photo with 50% sky and 50% earth is going to be boring as hell. But in some situations, it can be a perfect picture. And that’s something with these rules: they are everything but absolute. So be careful to try different ones for the same location.

Frame within a Frame

I, personally, love to frame within another frame.

Maybe it could be a little hard to do it from the air, but once you find the way, this can be very interesting, the idea is to show your subject looking through another subject. It could be the green field inside an stadium, or maybe watching something inside a window, or through a skylight.

Leading lines lead your eyes

The leading lines rules are classic and easy to use. Something that just couldn’t fail. This is because when we see from a Bird’s Eye perspective most of the human constructions are defined by roads, sidewalks, and any kind of connecting lines from one point of interest to another. So,let’s connect the dots in this giant canvas that is what our drone sees!

Negative Space

I would also like you to encourage you to use the rule of negative space. This is a rule that teaches us to just put our main element of interest in the picture in one space of the image  and leave a lot of space, the one we usually fill with context and leave it empty, so we can just focus on our subject of interest…

But composition is way more than following direct rules, because we need to add story, we just don’t want to see a well composed, well exposed image.

We want answers:

What ‘s happening?

How is it happening?

Where is it happening?

When is it happening?

Why is it happening?

Do you think you can answer at least four of those questions with your actual images?  

Remember, visual language is an actual language, and we need to learn how to write with it. But it’s not only learning the alphabet. It’s actually combining its elements to create images that transmit what we originally wanted to make see, think and feel an actual feeling or idea. It’s learning how to sell what we want the other person to feel when they watch our masterpieces.

What did you think of these composition rules I shared with you today? Would you like me to expand on a composition from the air article series? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!