Notice that the image is roughly divided up in to three equal parts, the foreground, the mountains, and the sky. The two trees are also roughly placed evenly on the right and left of center. It gives it a balance so that no certain element of the scene dominates the image. You can take a second or two and see if you should balance it by halves, thirds, quarters or even fifths if the scene calls for it. Many digital cameras have an option for a similar grid overlay on the view-screen/viewfinder.
Also there is no discernible man-made objects in the picture (I edited out the one pole that was in the original) which gives it an "untamed wilderness" vibe.

Thanks Tom. These types of "classes" are invaluable to those of us trying to learn.

Thanks for the tutorial. Really helpful!!

Excellent tutorial! Many thanks for the posting, Tom.

Nice of you to take the time for this tutorial Tom.Happy Thanksgiving 2004.
Peace&Respect Jojo

this is very simple and to the point, it's the very basics of inside the lenses, i hope someone reads it and learns...congrats on a very simple presentation...

Not bad, but the grid is more complex than you say it is. The cubes in a grid for the 800 by 600 should add up to be 4 by 4. The more squares the smaller the work space, the easier it is to do! But the editor I use has a grid that is marked off by pixels. The cubes in the grid are about 20 to 30 pixels by 10 to 20 pixels. If you have a HD monitor the pixels are not visable, in a regular monitor the pixels are easily spotted. Take for example if you spray water on the screen, the pixels show up in the three base colors. This way you can edit the pixel groups and go bigger and edit quadrents of pixels to make a pic appear lighter or darker, and so on.

Matthew :-)

Ooops! I missed this one. Excellent basic lesson, Tom. MUST be seen by every photographers. Thanks :-)

Tom, i have thought about taking this out of my favs, but then i see all the pics posted, so i will leave it here, maybe forever...

Thank you very much for the tutorial....very helpful!

I would have liked to have seen more contrast in an image used as a sample of compostion - more snap. This is good but not the best example in my opinion. The lesson is valuable for intrained shooters. Thanks for all you do Caedes!

WOOOW COOOL

Great info thanks.