My favorite compositions of Henri Cartier-Bresson:
1. Surreal selfies
Find funny mirrors and fun house distortions and shoot your selfie!
2. Streams of light
Find a nice diagonal or thunderbolt shaped stream of light, and wait for someone to enter!
3. Three dimensionality
Make more three dimensional pictures by having things in the foreground, middle ground, and background, and lots of hand gestures and people looking in different directions!
4. Black space and triangles
Shoot in places with bright light, and shoot with – 1 or – 2 exposure compensation. Extra bonus points if you can make a triangle composition!
5. Blur
Find an interesting background or pattern, and shoot a person blurred and obscured. This will make your photo look more surreal.
6. Step back, show a sense of scale
Make your subjects super small, and show the urban landscape.
7. Minimalism
Just one subject from a distance, clean silhouette, and epic landscape.
8. Arabesque composition
Arabesque is a squiggly line, which adds more elegance and movement to your pictures.
A secret is to space out your subjects:
Or go to big gatherings of people. Make an arabesque by shooting people on different levels or planes:
9. Fill the frame with people
10. Diagonal composition, with subjects about to exit the frame.
11. Elegant minimalism without people
Just include birds and buildings.
12. Shoot on top of a mountain looking down
13. Wait for subjects to enter your frame
Find a nice composition in the background and be patient until your subjects enter your frame!
14. Curve composition
Repetition of ballerinas on top, and orchestra on bottom:
15. Repeating arm gestures (diagonals)
Also fill the frame:
16. Off center composition and leading lines
Look for steps, architecture that points to your subjects:
17. Hand gestures and triangles
18. Shadows and light
Keep it minimal:
19. Diagonal composition with lots of subjects spaced out
20. Dynamic tension of subjects looking opposite directions
