A discerning eye should be every photographer’s goal. A discerning eye catches the smallest of details, details that otherwise would have a negative effect on the overall composition.
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Making the slightest shift in point of viewcan have a huge and very favorable impact in the overall composition. If there is a barometer of photographic maturity, finding the fine print would be it. Fine print is often hidden. That is why it’s called “fine print”. Fine print includes those small and subtle shifts in contrast, color, tones and those equally small and subtle mergers that the discerning eye refuses to tolerate. Read on and I’ll show you how to start reading the fine print.
Time’s Up
A humorous play on the word ‘expired’ finds one of my friends, Joe, playing the ‘expired’ dead man lying in the street…but notice in the first example (below left), how Joe’s upper arm and shoulder is merging with the yellow parking meter. This is fine print. After moving slightly to my right, the merger, the fine print has been eliminated.
Of these two images, which do you prefer? Chances are really strong of course that you prefer the second photograph and it is part of our internal need for order yet also for space. In a composition like, this where there really is not a lot going on, (a piece of roadway, a yellow parking meter and a ‘body’) it is akin to being in an elevator with a stranger where all of us need a bit of space. On the other hand, IF this image were a really crowded street, much like a really crowded elevator or subway car, any potential merger of Joe with the parking meter would go unnoticed or at the least be excused since the eye/brain would allow for the crowded and carnival like atmosphere of the street to allow for mergers.
On The Fence
I think it was Jill, my assistant, who hollered out that there was a cat sitting up on the fence that surrounded the windmill. At this news, myself and a few other students turned our attention towards the fence where indeed a cat was sitting. We were all enjoying the warm and golden afternoon light in the area of West Friesland, Holland, during my April workshop of 2011. In this first example on the left, taken with my Nikon D3x camera and 70-300mm lens on tripod , do you notice the “fine print”? You don’t see it? That’s why I call it fine print. It’s there, just to the left of the cat.
I am speaking about the ‘white’ out of focus doorway of the windmill. Notice how it merges with the similar white tone of the white cat? I find that tone distracting, in much the same way we find people sitting next to us conversing on their cell phones. The solution here, as is often the case is to a minor shift in my point of view, moving a wee bit up and to the right—and just like that, the fine print was gone.
Moving Mountains
Repeat after me: “I am an artist and just like the painter, every frame I shoot is at first a ‘blank’ canvas and I do have the choice of what I choose to place on my canvas, and where I choose to place it!”
If you have read any of my books then you know I am a huge fan of the Leica D-Lux camera. If you are not a fan of doing some extreme close-up work, then this might not be the camera for you, but this is perhaps the biggest reason of all why I have loved the Leica D-Lux since its inception; it has this uncanny ability to focus really close, a 1/3″ close, when at the wide-angle setting, (24mm equivalent in 35mm terms). It is also an extremely small and lightweight point and shoot so anytime I wish to shoot a ‘quick’ macro shot I just whip out the D-Lux 5.
Last summer, while atop the Valensole Plain, in Provence, inspiration struck once again. What if I took three stalks of lavender and held them up close to the Leica’s wide-angle lens and incorporated these foreground stalks against a background composition of the plain? As you can see in the two resulting images, the great sense of depth has now been created with the use of this extreme foreground when combined with the background of converging parallel’s rows of lavender. However look closely at the first attempt on the left and it’s clear to me that the distant mountain is obscured by position of the middle flower. It’s an easy fix and there is no better time to do it then now while I am standing here in this field. I simply push the flowers up a wee bit higher into the frame and now the distant mountain is no longer hidden from view (image below right).
To be clear, a discerning eye, for most of us, is developed over time – sometimes a lengthy time and this development of the discerning eye is simply the result of countless image making and/or image editing experiences. And the only way to develop a discerning eye is to keep that camera up to your eye, or as I like to say, “You keep shooting!”
Make it Happen: Use the gear feaured in Bryan’s tip!
