What Is Frame Within a Frame Photography and How Do You Use It?

Once you get comfortable with your camera and become an advanced photographer, you will know it’s not the expensive camera or the settings that take great photos. Instead, the choices you make as a photographer determine the quality of your photos.

Have you tried all the usual composition techniques and looking for something new? Frame within a frame photography is a perfect one to try.

What Is Frame Within a Frame Photography?

Frame within a frame photography is when you have your subject inside a frame in your composition. The first frame is what you’re framing the subject with, the second is the camera’s frame. It gives you a feeling of looking through something.

The frame can be anything from architectural elements like windows and doors to natural foliage and flowers. The frame doesn’t have to be a complete rectangle or circle. You can just have a foreground or background frame too.

Why Should You Use Frame Within a Frame Photography?

Let’s explore why the frame within a frame technique is so effective.

Add Visual Interest

Having a frame helps to direct the viewer’s eyes to the subject. A frame basically highlights the subject more.

Unlike the other random photos, the frame within a frame photo demands attention. It makes the viewers stop in their tracks and look more closely. And that is one of the benchmarks of a good picture.

Add Depth

Your photos are in 2D, so they may look flat if you’re not careful. Adding a frame to your image gives it depth and makes it look more natural and realistic. It is similar to adding layers to your photo composition.

The framing technique also adds a sense of space to your photos to give viewers a better idea of the place.

Tell a Better Story

With frame within a frame photography, you step back and include more elements in your scene instead of focusing tight. This will allow your viewers to see more things in the foreground and background and understand the narrative better.

For instance, if you want to tell the story of a wild animal sneaking into the city, you can include houses or other human-made structures as a frame. Unfortunately, a stand-alone animal portrait is not going to cut it.

Try Something New

Are you not impressed with the above reasons? Then, try framing simply because you want to try something different. It will push your creative boundaries, and you may fall in love with this technique.

Everyone takes isolated photos of birds, but adding a floral foreground will make the image pop. Your picture will also be unique among the thousands of bird photos.

How to Compose Frame Within a Frame Photos

Generally, fast lenses are great for taking frame in a frame photos. With their shallow depth of field, you can blur out the foreground and get a beautiful frame around your images. So if you’re a proud owner of the famous nifty-fifty lens, now is the time to take it out and experiment.

Shoot in Nature

Framing is easy when you’re outdoors. Take a walk in the park; you will be inspired by the natural scenery around you. There are tree branches, flower bushes, vines, and many things to use as frames. Caves and waterfalls are also other offbeat options you can explore.

Frame within a frame photography works great for portraits, but you can try other subjects too. You can find a variety of subjects in nature. From flowers to bugs and animals, there is no shortage of exciting subjects in nature.

Find Beautiful Architecture

Door frames, windows, pillars, bridges, and other architectural elements fit perfectly as the frame for your frame within a frame photos. There are so many ways you can incorporate them into your shots.

Browse for inspiration, and you will find all the famous places like the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, and the San Francisco Bridge captured with this technique. Remember, you can add as much or as little frame as you want. There is no hard and fast rule.

Use Props

Want to take this idea further? Then, find small things to use as props. You can also unleash your creativity to make a one-of-a-kind frame. You can use mirrors, glasses, camera filters, and lenses. Tie up some twigs or make flower crowns to use as a frame.

Take a look at your craft stash, and you can come up with some quirky frame ideas. You can even use a picture frame to frame your subject.

Let Your Subjects Pose

If you’re taking portraits, you can ask your subject to make a shape with their hands, like a rectangle or heart, and frame their eyes. You can also use their hands or legs as a frame and shoot through them. Framing is also fun when there are multiple people. They can join hands and make a frame for you to shoot through.

Landscape photos look amazing when shot through frames. For example, imagine looking over a sweeping vista of a valley with the shoulders as a frame.

Step Back for a Wide Angle View

Posing your subjects with actual frames is easier than framing with natural and engineered elements. So, you have to put in some effort and actively learn the skill.

Instead of zooming in close, move back or zoom out your lens to add more details to your shot. If you have a wide-angle lens, you can leave it on your camera for a few days. Or keep your zoom lens at its shortest focal length. This way, you can train your eyes to see the framing options in your scene.

Try Frame Within a Frame Photography for Compelling Images

With the internet saturated with too many images, you have to look for ways to develop your own style and stand out from the crowd. Exploring different compositional ideas is one way you can do that. And frame within a frame is an easy one to start with.

You don’t need any special equipment to get started. Just use your creativity and imagination to take showstopping images.