Stop Cramming So Much Into The Frame
Posted by Katrina Kennedy on Mar 6, 2012 in Blog, Photography | 1 comment
Have you ever REALLY thought about what you love about photos?
Grab your favorites, line them up side by side and see what you notice.
One thing always screams at me when I see the line up.
There is not a lot of extra in the frames!
In fact, many of my favorites are almost sparse.
Yep. They have a few things in common:
1. One subject. Clear and obvious.
2. Room around the frame. Lots of it.
3. Eyes. (Okay, that’s just a personal preference and not really related to my point, but definitely something I notice.)
The absence of extra helps to define your subject. You (and the viewer) have a clear concept of the story you are trying to convey.
So does this mean you can never take a photo of more than one person again?
Of course not. But when you do include more than one in the frame, make sure the action, the story, is obvious. In portrait photography this is often created by having your subject’s touch, moving them in closer to each other.
What feels unnatural sometimes makes the best photos.
For everyday photography getting your subjects to connect isn’t always practical, but can definitely be altered for our purposes. Make the action of your subjects connected. Make them connect, if not physically, by placement or eye direction or through equal weight in the frame. Let one have more visual mass and the other balance the first.
Play with it. Remove things from your frame. Go for less. I think you will like it more.
I, too, like to keep it simple…. and that usually means less in the frame. I am with you sister! Part of that is paying attention to the background…. that sometimes eliminates the “stuff” that clogs the frame. Oh, all the stray laundry baskets of my past photos, de darned!