6 hours ago
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A great subject, beautiful light, and the right gear can still leave a portrait feeling like something is missing. The gap between an image that falls flat and one that holds your attention almost always comes down to composition.
Working through a shoot, Julia Trotti walks through seven composition tips you can apply on your next shoot. Trotti starts with depth, choosing to shoot from a side-on angle rather than straight into the wall so the location sits close to the subject on one side and dissolves into the distance on the other. She also keeps an eye out for color, folding a branch of purple flowers into the first few frames. Both moves come from reading a single location for more than one look, which is a skill you can practice anywhere without new gear.
Angles do a lot of heavy lifting throughout the session. Trotti points out that changing your position and framing takes pressure off your subject, which helps enormously when the person in front of you is not comfortable posing. She alternates between clean backgrounds with nothing but ivy in the frame and busier shots that include trees, a pathway, and background texture to tie the set together. Perspective gets its own tip, since staying at eye level the whole time produces a set that looks repetitive. An angle that catches a house in the far distance adds color and texture that a flat frame would miss. She shot the session on the Sony a7 IV paired with the Sigma 35mm f/1.2, and she's candid about finding the first-generation autofocus weaker than she'd like.
Color theory runs underneath the whole shoot. Trotti places a red dress against green surroundings because the two sit opposite each other on the color wheel and create natural contrast, and the vibrancy of both pushes that contrast further. She contrasts this with a past shoot where a pink outfit against green got toned down in post for a softer result. The distance tip is one of her strongest: pulling your subject away from a flat wall instead of pressing them against it creates separation and stops background lines from cutting awkwardly through the frame. The rest, including the rule of odds and natural framing, she saves for the video.
The idea worth sitting with is the last one, where Trotti argues against applying these rules too literally. Composition guidance tends to get taught as a set of boxes to tick, and photographers new to it often chase textbook symmetry until every frame looks the same kind of correct. What she demonstrates is closer to how these principles work once they become second nature. In her final full-body shots, she still uses the rule of odds with two trees and her model, but crops one tree nearly out and pushes the other toward center. The framing branch sweeps behind the subject rather than wrapping neatly around her head. That looseness is a sign of a photographer who understands the rule well enough to bend it, and it's a useful marker for where you are in your own progression. Learn the structure first, then earn the right to break it.
There's a broader shift here too. Portraiture has moved steadily toward a more cinematic, editorial feel over the past few years, driven partly by what performs on social platforms and partly by the film emulation looks flooding presets and camera profiles. Trotti's choice to keep her model standing independently, never interacting with the location, sits squarely in that direction. A subject who isn't touching or leaning on their surroundings reads as more staged and dramatic than a lifestyle shot where the person is caught mid-moment. Knowing which of those two feelings you want before you start shapes every other decision, from wardrobe to distance to how you pose the hands.
Trotti breaks down all seven tips in the video above, so give it a watch to see the rest in action.
English (US) ·