The Camerazzi Community

Composition: small things that count!

On seeing this photo for the first time, I immediately liked it, but at the same time something was bothering me – what was it? Kieta thought it would help cropping the top and left, while Mike had 2 probs – the in-between DOF and the very busy scene. Author Pikkie (Langenhoven) liked his photo as is, which is good!

The busy scene could be a problem if the purple flower was intended as the main the subject; however there is nothing wrong with preferring to make the entire scene the subject and if it happens to be busy, it is fine with me. But this is where the DOF becomes a problem. If the entire scene is intended as the subject, the entire scene should be in focus, which is not the case.

Alternatively most togs will use shallow DOF (Subject in focus and b/g and/or f/g blurred) to isolate the subject from its surroundings and make it stand out. The photo has a definite focal point/area of interest in the purple flower, which suggests that the flower should be the main subject and since the b/g is blurred it should assist in drawing focus to the (in focus) flower – now this is also not happening. Instead when looking at the whole picture, my eye is drawn away from the flower to two other areas as I have indicated below: the one in the b/g is especially problematic as it is quite persistent in claiming attention while neither enhancing the scene as a whole or the flower as a single subject.
Similarly the protea leaves in the left are drawing the eye away from the purple flower and out of the frame – this time for the opposite reason of being too sharp rather than too blurred.

I followed two avenues to try and improve the result: Kieta’s suggestion to crop top and left, but in the process I also cloned out the most distracting part of the b/g blur.

Alternatively one could crop much tighter to eliminate the sky altogether and also position the flower on the strong point – the cross of the top and right 1/3 lines – personally I feel that this would have been the best way to go, preferably on camera. I only had the small low-res image to work with and could not make it any bigger without losing too much quality.

Alternatively one could try the portrait option with the flower yet again positioned on a strong point. In this case the flower would become the sole subject, yet then the sprouts in the right would be rather distractive…shew, isn’t it just fascinating how the small things can play major parts in determining the greatness of a pic!

BTW Pikkie, you are not learning because you are a beginner, you are learning because you are an enthusiast – I’ve been at it for 40 years and still hap’ly learning!