Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Keep It Simple

It’s normal to want to take a picture of a beautiful scene you happen upon. You hop out of the car, and shoot a picture that takes in as much as you can see with your bare eyes. But most times, including too much hurts the composition because the viewer does not know what to focus on. Rather than having an immediate response to the image, the viewer’s eyes wander all over the frame trying to take it all in. Just look at this image to see what I mean.



The best solution is to simplify the number of elements in the image as in the image seen below. By driving a bit further, literally a few hundred yards, I found a spot where the elements were reduced to just four—sky, clouds, mountains and trees. The result is an image with more punch, and a stronger ability to hold the viewer's attention.

1 comment:

mbwit said...

Thanks so much for doing a blog to help people who want to learn to take better photos. I used your advise in taking a landscape photo and it turned out 90% better than my landscape photos usually turn out! MW