One of the most beneficial things a photographer can do as an artist is enter print competition. Not for the sake of winning awards, but to grow, learn and improve. If you look at some of the general rules that have been applied with success to images in print competition over the years, you can find some great composition and presentation lessons that make for better images.

Let’s look at using compositional cues to make sure you drive your audience to look at the part of the image that is the most important to relay the message you are trying to get across.

Compositionally the two most common placements of a subject in an image are based on the rule of thirds or bulls-eye. The rule of thirds, the most popular, would be like placing a tic-tac-toe game over your image, as shown above.