There may be poetry in motion, but it’s not necessarily easy to capture that poetry in a still photograph. Despite that, we all try from time to time, and there are various techniques we can use.
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Let’s consider how much of your image is occupied by your main subject. Often the answer to that is, quite a lot of it. But you can take this to extremes, either filling the frame completely or leaving lots of empty space around your subject. Both can be effective, in different ways.
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How good are you being self-critical when it comes to your photography? Can you easily pick out the best of your shots and are you comfortable rejecting those that have been less successful? I confess I’m pretty rubbish at it.
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Salvador Dali said that, 'Surrealism is destructive'. It seems counter-intuitive to think of art as destructive, when it is such a creative process. Surely the purpose of art is to construct? And photography, as an art-form, creates or constructs a record of a moment in time. So perhaps to apply Dali’s definition of Surrealism to our photography, we need to partially destroy our images and distort that record in post-production?
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Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, 'Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,' and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.
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Reflections really add something to a landscape, perhaps because they allow us to ‘see double’. Already beautiful scenery is enhanced by being presented to us a second time, often rippled or distorted in an upside-down version of itself.
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When composing photos I find I usually do one of two things. I either follow the ‘rule of thirds’ (roughly) or I look for symmetry. The latter works best for architecture, for portraits (human or animal) and for some close-up and macro shots.
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Before photographing your subject, it’s worth taking time to think about where you will shoot it from. Our viewpoint has a massive impact on the composition of our photo, and as a result it can greatly affect the message that the shot conveys. As well as shooting from eye level, consider photographing from high above, down at ground level, from the side, from the back, from a long way away, from very close up, and so on.
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Keeping things simple doesn’t mean taking it easy. Sometimes it’s harder to leave things out when composing an image than to include them. There can be a temptation to cram everything in, to show it all in a single image. However, often your subject will have more impact on the viewer if it stands alone, free of clutter. This is something I try for in all my photography; leaving the non-essentials out of an image. But sometimes keeping it simple isn’t enough; I want to strip away almost everything to create a truly minimalist image.
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Who hasn’t explored a building, maybe an impressive fortress or palace, and had one of those ‘wow’ moments as you emerge from the darkness of the building to an arch or window revealing the lightness outside?
