Creative Photography Tips - Know your Subject in better way and focus on story-telling through outstanding Compositions
We click photographs to show some specific things look beautiful or tell a story or create memory or creating an art-piece. Choosing a photography subject is essential to the process of clicking photographs. Subject should look in best form in a photograph. Subject selection varies a lot. At times, it's decided on the fly when you observe something interesting. Sometimes you decide subject over a period of time or stage it. In Abstract photography your subject may not be noticeable in final result but still subject remains important to create outstanding photographs.
This blogpost is about finding answers in terms of how to identify subjects, what makes that subject interesting or different, how you place your subject in your frame to make best use of the it's interesting features/aspects. We will focus a lot on how to ensure your subject is taken care well in your photographs.
In photography, the subject is simply the object that is shown in the image. A photograph can have multiple things, so which one of them is main subject? The subject is the focus on the image, both literally as the sharpest point in the photograph and stand out clearly.
The subject leads the photographer’s decisions about aspects like lighting, composition, exposure settings and more.
Photographers & Artists often choose subjects by what inspires them — something in the scene that stands out, something that’s out-of-the-ordinary, or simply something to remember in future.
Subjects don’t necessarily have to be extraordinary to create a outstanding photographs, though the photographer may have to work harder to find a unique way to portray that ordinary object.
While the subject is often the first thing that the photographer decides on, that’s not always the case. Photographers may decide on a subject after spotting great light, choosing something already in the scene that the light hits just right. At times great lighting inspire you to find right subjects to click.
Now let's talk about 'HOW' you chose right subject and make them stand out in your photographs :
Be more observant about interesting subjects around you:
The more you shoot a variety of subjects, the more you will get a feel for what would make a great subject. Experienced photographers will often spot great lighting, an interesting pattern or an odd placement and immediately know that’s their subject. That comes with practice. So keep clicking lot of photographs and ask for each frame what you like or dislike about that photograph. Observations at every step makes you better at practices any art like Photography.
Photography is all about capturing light information through devices like cameras which translates into photographs. To learn photography & the process of creating photographs, one has to understand light and how it works. But this is little tricky than understanding controls of your camera body, so continuous observation along with varied experiments over a period of time makes you master lighting in Photography context.
Lighting on object defines lot of things in your photograph. Contrast, colors, brightness etc all controlled by lighting conditions on object as well as surroundings. Light takes various forms during it's journey from source of lighting till hitting the subject you want to photograph, through various deflections.
Surroundings of your subject matter (Isolate the Subject in your photograph) :
The subject is important but so is everything else in the frame you plan to shoot. The background and foreground bring a lot of difference to your subject. Many subjects suffer from clutter around them, so it's important to be aware. Consider everything in your photograph and if it doesn’t have a reason to be there, consider moving in closer or adjusting your angle to eliminate any distractions.
There are different ways you can place your subject in your frame but it should tell a story about the subject and emphasise it's importance in the frame in correct way. There are various composition rules which suit different kinds of subjects or backgrounds.
Many of the photographs look because they are unusual, but question is what makes those photographs unusual? In any kind of art, we can appreciate that we are liking this art-piece and at times there are reasons to share why someone likes a particular art, but it's challenging when we try to find an answer what made this art special and how such art-piece can be created. And to make things more complex, every art has science associated but at the end artistic aspects make an art special. Today we will try to the very first we asked in this post through one method to make your photographs look unusual, which is change your point of view when clicking a photograph.
Photography Composition Rules - Leave Negative Space
Above photograph shows an example where it may not be important to keep whole subject in the frame. If you can compose photograph even better by cropping the subject without losing the essence, that's ok. At the end photograph should be pleasing and tell a story.
Tell a Story about your Subject through the photograph :
Story telling through photography is a great way to appreciate photography as an art. A photograph should give interesting insights about the subject and it's surrounding. Like above photograph shows cow in a shed which doesn't have any roof and there are more such slots in the photograph. This is an area which doesn't get any rainfall and during the day cattle need good sunlight. This is Spiti region of Himachal Pradesh. During snowfall days, cattle share house space with families. During summers, same space is used for gathering dry wood.
Does Subject reflect your belief, vision or how you look at the world?
Photography is a way to express how you look world — people and objects that matter to you always make a great subject. Some photographers love shooting flowers, others birds or chairs etc. Find what inspires you and then you have found your photography subject. But above all it's not about genre you want to follow but keep creating photographs which touches you and can express something meaningful for viewers. Like above photograph expresses colors in it's best form along with showcasing the sense of travel to a place which can blue sky and windy environment.
Having a great subject in your photograph or a boring subject presented in an unusual way is the art of creating outstanding photographs.
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