Take Better Photographs
These are my ideas on taking better photographs. What do I do?
Why do you want to photograph that...
You go to all the trouble of taking your camera out of its bag, switching it on, changing the settings, aiming, and finally pressing the shutter button. WHY ???
Something interested you. Something caught your eye. What was it ?
Once you have answered that question, try to make it the center of attention:
Would placing it on the 1/3rds help (Rule of Thirds)?
Did you like it just for itself, or was its context also important? Try to include this context as part of the foreground to emphasise what you saw. For example, a castle may look magnificant, but would you feel the same if was in the middle of a rubbish dump? Of course not, the lake in front of it was important too! Include it as foreground?
But what if the context is not important? For example, an exquisite flower? Then zoom right in. Fill the photograph with its glory. Cut out all the extraneous features which divert the eye from the real subject.
Why look at that photograph...
What's the subject? This is important when the key to enjoyment is its composition.
I stare at a photograph, and mentally trace where my eye automatically wanders. This creates a mass of "pencil lines" across the photograph. If there is a subject of real interest, there will be the majority of pencil lines over it.
If there are features leading in towards the subject, there will be lots of lines suddenly shooting off towards the subject.
However, if there is no real compositional subject, the plot of pencil lines will be random. Is this bad? Not if there is something other than composition to draw the eye. Such as colour!
