Composition in photography can be a difficult subject to teach to others. This is because composition can be a deeply personal thing. What appeals to me may not appeal to you.

However, many photographers, beginners in particular, are not happy with the way their photos look. But often they can't quite put their finger on why.

There are plenty of rules and guidelines to help you with composition. Possibly the best known is the Rule Of Thirds. This rule suggests your composition should be divided into a nine-part grid, by running two lines horizontally (a third from the top and a third from the bottom) and two lines vertically (a third from the left and a third from the right). According to the rule, large objects (trees, buildings etc) should be placed on these lines, and small objects are most effective if positioned where the lines intersect.

Photos composed around these guidelines have a balanced look. Objects seem to appear exactly where your eye expects to find them. So when you build a composition around the Rule Of Thirds, your photo satisfies the viewer's natural sense of proportion.

Some people have an innate sense of visual balance. They have a natural flair for creative composition that does not need to be guided by rules. However, if you were to examine their photos, you would be sure to find that most of their photos fitted the rule perfectly - even if they were not aware of it.

If you are a beginner in photography and still struggling with composition, the Rule Of Thirds is an excellent place to start. I recommend to every beginner to learn it, practice it, get so familiar with it that you start to apply it without even thinking. Then, once you are truly comfortable with the Rule Of Thirds - ignore it about half the time.

Recently a man walked into my gallery, and before I even said hello I heard him telling his friends: "You see, this is a good photo because it fits the rule of thirds. This is a bad photo because the kangaroo is right in the middle. This sunset is no good because the horizon is too low when it should be here, a third of the way up..."

This man was obviously an ardent devotee of the Rule Of Thirds. For him, anything that stepped outside the boundaries of the rule was automatically a bad photo. But is composition really so simplistic? Of course not.

The real world is not nearly so neatly organised as the Rule Of Thirds. More importantly, being creative means finding your own way to express the character of a subject, which may not always require a traditional approach.

I can give you two very simple examples from my own collection. One of my outback photos has a very detailed foreground, and some tall bushes in the background. I have positioned the horizon right through the centre of the photo. If I raised it higher, I would have lost the foreground. If I dropped it lower, the tops of the bushes would be cut off. In this case, the composition was influenced by the circumstances.

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