Photographic Composition

Over the last couple of years, I have really been working on improving my photography skills. I enjoy capturing people's emotions through portraits and I have learned a lot about the skill and technical aspects of photography. I am still ever trying to improve on some of the more subjective aspects - the composition.

I am convinced that merely immersing myself in well-composed photographs will help me to improve - after all, that is how one improves one's language skills, so why could it not work for the 'language' of art and photography?

Immersing does help tremendously. I can spend countless hours looking at and critiquing pictures on pbase.com or flickr.com. But so does this recently discovered site on compositional patterns. Coming from a computing science background, I appreciate how they have distilled them down to identifiable patterns. Looking back on many of the photographs I have taken, I can identify which pattern I unknowingly chose.