A good picture requires a lot of elements, including an interesting subject, a steady hand, and a high-quality camera, to name a few. As important as the megapixel rating of your digital camera, though, is your own ability to apply the rules of composition to what you see on the LCD display before you press the shutter release.

What does it take to create a good composition? There are just a few rules, really, that define what most people perceive as a good photo. By following the advice in this week's newsletter, you can dramatically improve all of your photos--from vacation snapshots to family portraits to your artistic experiments.

Isolate the Focal Point

What is the subject of your picture? Always ask yourself that, since your picture, like a painting or a story, should usually be about something. It's up to you to decide what story the photo will tell; give ten people ten cameras and tell them to photograph the same flower, and you can end up with ten very different images that show many different aspects of the flower. But remember that a good photo will emphasize its subject and give it substantially more visual weight than the other elements in the picture.

Imagine a picturesque landscape, for instance. Don't just raise the camera to your eyes and press the button. Pick something in the viewfinder and focus on that. Remember that one sprawling landscape probably looks like every other sprawling landscape; if you don't pick a focal point, when you look at the image later, you'll wonder why you thought it was great.

Last, but not least, remember that the subject of your photo--the focal point--should be in razor-sharp focus. If your subject is even a little blurry, you've lost the photo. Digital "film" is cheap; try taking the photo again. And any portrait photographer will tell you that when photographing people or animals, it's the eyes that count. Make sure your camera's auto-focus control locks onto the eyes, not the nose or cheek.

Use the Rule of Thirds

Now that you're thinking about your photos in terms of a focal point, you need to decide where to put your subject in the picture. Rarely will planting the subject dead center in your viewfinder make for a successful photo. People tend to like seeing the focal point about a third of the way across the scene. To achieve this, you can mentally draw two horizontal lines and two vertical lines across the scene, dividing the picture into nine equal zones. The four points in the picture where the lines intersect are your sweet spots--put the subject in any of those places and your image will have a lot more appeal than if the focal point was in the center.

To get a feel for the rule of thirds, pay attention to films at the theater--you'll find that people are often placed a third of the way across the screen, not in the center.

Fill the Frame

Make the most of your frame by filling it as much as possible. If you're shooting a distant object, zoom in or walk closer. For example, you think your focal point is a dragonfly on a tree stump, but the bug is so small that no one can tell it's there. Guess what? It's not really your focal point. If you simply can't get close enough to your subject, shoot the picture in the camera's highest available resolution, zoomed all the way in with the camera's optical zoom (don't use the digital zoom), and snip away the wasted space afterwards in an image-editing program. You can probably make it a much better picture by cropping.

Use Lines as Guides

I love shooting railroad tracks, long roads that seem to sweep off to the end of the earth, and long stone walls. That's because I can use those kinds of elements to lead the viewer through the picture. Remember how I said that your photos tell a story? Lines like these are tools you can use to show the viewer where to look.

Break the Rules

Once you've learned the rules of composition and applied them to your own photos, be sure to break them once in a while. Sometimes it's a good idea to put the subject in the middle of the picture, to make the focal point blurry, or leave lots of wasted space in a photo. Photography is all about experimentation--so have fun ignoring the rules once in a while.