Chapter 6 — Exercises

Composition is the most camera-independent skill in this book, so a phone is not a compromise here — it's ideal. Most of these send you out to shoot or ask you to look hard at a frame. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do at least the starred and odd-numbered ones; model answers and critiques for those live in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Turn on your camera's grid overlay before you start — it draws the rule-of-thirds lines onto your screen and you'll want them for half of these. Keep everything you shoot; the best frame from these exercises may become your Portfolio keeper.

Part A — Read the Frame (analyze a described image)

Exercise 6.1 ⭐ — Name the arrangement. Find five photographs you admire (camera roll, a book, packaging, a wall). For each, name in one sentence: where the subject sits relative to the thirds grid, whether there's a leading line and where it goes, and whether the frame is balanced symmetrically or asymmetrically. You're building fluency in the chapter's vocabulary.

Exercise 6.2 ⭐⭐ — Read this frame and find the mistake. Here is a Described Photograph. Read it, then (a) name the light, (b) name the composition tools in play, and (c) identify the one composition mistake and prescribe the fix.

"Walker on the bridge"      [constructed teaching example]
  THE FRAME    A person walks across a footbridge, placed dead-center. They are facing and walking toward
               the LEFT edge of the frame, which is only a few centimeters away. The right two-thirds of
               the frame is empty railing. A bright lamp post pokes in at the top-right corner.
  THE LIGHT    Flat, even overcast — soft, directionless, no strong shadows.
  THE MOMENT   Mid-stride, leading foot forward.

Write your three-part answer.

Exercise 6.3 ⭐⭐ — Where does the eye go? For three photographs (yours or admired), trace the path your eye takes: where does it land first, where does it go second, where does it rest? Write the path as an arrow sequence (e.g. "bright face → hand → the children → back to face"). Then name what's causing each move (brightness? a line? a gaze? color?). This is the core skill of reading composition.

Exercise 6.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Diagnose the weight. Find one photograph that feels subtly "off" or lopsided to you. Using visual weight (size, brightness, color, faces, position), explain exactly why it feels unbalanced — which element is too heavy and where it sits — and prescribe the specific reframe (reposition the subject, add a counterweight, or crop) that would settle it.

Part B — Shoot This (graduated field assignments)

Exercise 6.5 ⭐ — Edges first. Pick any subject. Before each shot, scan the four edges of the frame and remove every distraction by moving your feet (step, crouch, rise, get closer) — never by cropping. Make three frames of the same subject, each cleaner at the edges than the last. Compare. Notice how much the picture improves with zero change to the subject or the light.

Exercise 6.6 ⭐ — Thirds, on the grid. Turn on your grid. Photograph five different subjects, each placed deliberately on a power point (not centered). For a person, put the eyes on the upper third line. For a landscape, put the horizon on a third line and give two-thirds to whatever matters more. Keep all five and confirm the subject lands on a crossing in each.

Exercise 6.7 ⭐⭐ — Lead the eye. Go to a park, trail, road, fence, or stairway. Find a line and use it to carry the eye to a subject. Shoot the same line three ways: standing height, crouched low (so it becomes a steep diagonal), and from a side angle. Place a subject where the line arrives. Keep the three frames where the line most clearly delivers the eye to the subject.

Exercise 6.8 ⭐⭐ — Three layers. Make a photograph with a clear foreground, midground, and background. The easiest method: crouch so something close enters the bottom of the frame (foreground), with your subject in the middle distance (midground) and something far behind (background). If you can't find a foreground, get lower and closer until one appears. The image should feel like you could step into it.

Exercise 6.9 ⭐⭐ — Frame within the frame. Find a doorway, archway, window, branch, tunnel, or gap between two objects, and position so your subject sits inside it. Make two versions: one with the foreground frame sharp, one with it thrown soft (closer to the lens, wider aperture if you have one). Notice how the frame both adds depth and points the eye at the subject.

Exercise 6.10 ⭐⭐ — Negative space. Make a photograph that is at least two-thirds empty — a small subject in a large quiet space (sky, wall, water, blur). Place the subject on a lower or side power point. The challenge is nerve: resist the urge to fill the frame. Caption it with the feeling the emptiness creates (solitude, scale, calm).

Exercise 6.11 ⭐⭐⭐ — Work the scene to one keeper. Pick one subject in one location and stay there for thirty minutes, making at least 25 frames, changing only composition: height, distance, placement on the grid, lines, layers, what you exclude. Choose your single best frame and write three sentences on why it beats the other 24. This is exactly how professionals shoot — they don't take a picture, they work a scene toward the picture.

Exercise 6.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — The red door (or your own). Find your own "red door" — any ordinary subject with a single strong color or shape against a plain background. Compose it as Figure 6.3 did: place the subject (or its key point) on a power point, leave plain space for it to ring against, and exclude everything else. Keep it; you'll revisit this same subject idea throughout the book.

Part C — Five Conditions (one subject, five arrangements)

Exercise 6.13 ⭐⭐ — One subject, five compositions. Pick one simple subject (a tree, a lone figure, a piece of fruit, the red door). Photograph it five ways, changing only the composition: (1) centered/symmetrical; (2) on a thirds power point with negative space; (3) led to by a line; (4) framed within a frame; (5) one deliberately "broken" rule (cut off at the edge, hard tilt, or filling the frame). Lay all five side by side, rank them, and write one sentence on which best served this subject and why.

Exercise 6.14 ⭐⭐⭐ — Vertical vs. horizontal, five subjects. Take five subjects you'd normally shoot horizontally and shoot each both ways — horizontal and vertical — composing each properly. For each pair, decide which orientation is stronger and articulate why (does the subject want the calm width of horizontal or the focused height of vertical?). Most beginners default to horizontal and miss half their pictures; this breaks the habit.

Part D — Recreate It (reproduce a known composition with your own subject)

Exercise 6.15 ⭐⭐ — Recreate the converging lines. Recreate the spirit of Figure 6.5 ("Lines at the crossing"): find strong converging lines (a crosswalk, a corridor, a railway, a row of columns) and place a subject — a person, an object — at the point where the lines converge, on a power point, with lead room ahead. Get low to exaggerate the diagonals. The line should slam the eye into the subject.

Exercise 6.16 ⭐⭐ — Recreate the three-layer window. Recreate Figure 6.8's structure at your own kitchen window (or any window): a dark foreground frame (the window edge, a sill object), a lit subject on a power point in the midground, and a bright soft background beyond the glass. The lesson is depth from layering plus soft window light.

Exercise 6.17 ⭐⭐⭐ — Recreate a symmetry. Find or make a symmetrical scene — a reflection in still water or a puddle, a face shot straight-on, a hallway or building centered on its axis — and shoot it deliberately centered, with the symmetry axis dead-center and the horizon (if any) perfectly level. This is your one sanctioned bullseye. Note how centering, normally a mistake, becomes correct when symmetry is the subject.

Part E — Fix the Photo (diagnose a described failure, prescribe the re-shoot)

Exercise 6.18 ⭐ — Fix the bullseye. A described shot: "A lighthouse, tiny and dead-center, with the horizon running exactly through the middle of the frame; flat grey sky above, flat grey sea below; a smudge of someone's finger in the top corner." Diagnose every composition problem and prescribe the specific re-shoot (placement, horizon, exclusion, getting closer).

Exercise 6.19 ⭐⭐ — Fix the cluttered street. A described shot: "A street musician you loved, but in the frame they share space with a parked car, a trash bin, a bright shop sign, and a stranger's elbow at the edge; the musician is small and centered." Prescribe the re-shoot using §6.1 (exclusion by moving) and §6.2 (placement). What do you exclude, where do you move, where does the subject go?

Exercise 6.20 ⭐⭐ — Fix the trapped walker. A described shot: "A person walking left, jammed against the left edge with no space ahead of them, the whole right side of the frame empty behind them." What's the rule being violated, and what's the fix? Describe the corrected frame precisely.

Exercise 6.21 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the flat landscape. A described shot: "A beautiful mountain lake that looks flat and postcard-dull — the mountains and lake fill the frame but the image feels like a wall, with no sense of distance or scale." Using depth (§6.5), prescribe the re-shoot: what foreground would you find, where would you crouch, what would give scale?

Part F — Eye Training (no-camera seeing, from the Light Log)

Exercise 6.22 ⭐ — Find five lines, no camera. Spend ten minutes walking and only hunt for leading lines — roads, rails, fences, shadows, edges, rows, handrails, cracks. For each of five lines, note (in your Light Log) where it would lead the eye and what subject you'd place at its end. No camera; you're training the seeing.

Exercise 6.23 ⭐⭐ — The negative-space hunt. For one day, note (no camera) three places where you see strong negative space — a single object against a vast quiet area. For each, name the feeling the emptiness creates and where you'd place the subject on the grid. Add the best one to your Light Log.

Exercise 6.24 ⭐⭐ — Trace the eye-path in the wild. Three times today, stop and ask of a real scene: "if this were a photograph, where would the eye enter, what would lead it, and where would it rest?" Write the path. You're learning to compose before you raise the camera — the mark of an advanced photographer.

Exercise 6.25 ⭐⭐⭐ — Weigh the world. Look at four real scenes and identify, in each, the single visually heaviest element (brightest? most saturated? a face? largest?) and where it sits. Then say whether the scene feels balanced or tipping, and what you'd add or move to settle it. You're internalizing visual weight without a shutter.

Part G — Interleaved (mix prior chapters)

Exercise 6.26 ⭐⭐ — Compose and light (Ch. 5 + 6). Take one composed frame (subject on a power point, a leading line) at two different times of day — once in flat midday light, once near golden hour. Same composition, different light. Which is stronger, and how much of the difference is composition versus light? (Composition and light are inseparable — this proves it.)

Exercise 6.27 ⭐⭐ — Compose with depth of field (Ch. 4 + 6). Make a framing-within-the-frame shot two ways: once with deep depth of field (foreground frame sharp), once with shallow depth of field (foreground frame soft, subject sharp). Recall Chapter 4: which aperture gives which, and which mood does each create here?

Exercise 6.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Expose for the composed frame (Ch. 3 + 6). You've composed a strong negative-space frame: a small dark subject against a vast bright sky. Recall the histogram and metering from Chapter 3. Where will the camera's meter try to put the brightness, and what will that do to your bright sky? What exposure compensation do you dial, and why? Then shoot it.

Exercise 6.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — The full four decisions (Ch. 1 + this chapter). Make one photograph in which you consciously make all four decisions from Chapter 1 — light, moment, frame, focus — and apply at least two composition tools from this chapter (thirds, lines, balance, depth, negative space). Write the four decisions and the two tools out before you shoot. This is the whole of Part I and Part II in one frame.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 6.30 ⭐⭐⭐ — The composition portfolio sheet. Over one week, make one strong, deliberately composed image per day — each using a different primary tool (Monday: thirds; Tuesday: a leading line; Wednesday: balance/symmetry; Thursday: layering/depth; Friday: framing-within-the-frame; Saturday: negative space; Sunday: a deliberately broken rule). Lay the seven out together. You'll have a one-week visual proof that you can compose with intent — and your Portfolio keeper for this chapter is almost certainly among them.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each with a camera (or your eyes) before reading them — in photography, the attempt is the lesson, and composition is learned by working the scene, not by reading about it.