Composition in photography is the art of visually presenting the contents of a photograph in a form and pattern that is pleasing to the human eye. Artists have long ago worked out that the human eye usually follows a pattern when looking at a picture, starting about two thirds up the picture, and usually traveling in a zig zag from left to right, and that the eye is naturally drawn to certain things such as straight lines, eyes, and the brightest area of the picture. Because the natural starting point is at a point about two thirds up a picture, the natural progression was to divide the picture up into an imaginary grid with horizontal thirds and vertical thirds. This gave rise to the Rule of Thirds, where elements are placed within the thirds either horizontally or vertically, with the key visual elements being place on the points where the lines intersect each other, known as the "Power Points".

 

 

Here, in a totally different kind of shot taken in a studio, we have done almost exactly the same thing in terms of composition. The model's head is the point of focus and lies roughly on the top right Power Point, whilst her bottom lies on the bottom right, her feet on the bottom left and a strong diagonal line that runs up her arms to her head, helping to draw the viewers eyes to hers.