Move In!

Sure, an overview of a landscape or other scenery can be interesting. But have you ever tried to pick just a small detail? It can be much more interesting. In music you say, “the beat is what is NOT played” (the gaps are building the beat). With photos you can learn, “It’s the things you DON’T see that makes it interesting”... well, kind of :-) - just read and see!

I know many people who take photos. Analog and digital photos. But what i always see is that they always try to capture the whole scene in just one single picture. For example: they are at a wedding to take some photos (no professional photographers, just people like you and me). Then they rarely use the zoom on their point-and-shoot. They always try to get the whole crowd of people, all tables with food on it, etc., into one single picture. And they take a lot of photos. The next day, when they look at their photos, they say something like: “Oh, great photos... but too bad, they cannot capture the great mood we had.”

You can find out the problem (and the solution) if you compare those pictures with great, moody pictures you may see in magazines or on the internet. Just don’t look at the topic of the pictures but look at the composition. What exactly is it what you REALLY can see? You may find out that your brain is telling you: “it’s a very nice wedding picture”. But if you just let your eye tell you what’s in the picture it may say: “Hm... well...there’s a female. She has some white thing over her shoulder but i only see half of the shoulder. Nice earring by the way”. Yes. It’s just a photo of the wife’s earring and you see her face and just enough of her shoulder to recognize the wedding dress.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an example of this on my own. But I’m sure you can imagine it. It’s much more interesting to see small details instead of a picture with all people around the bride. You can use such wide-angles for documentation of course, but in most cases you cannot capture the mood this way.

Another example with fall-pictures. See this picture:

Nice trees in the fall, you might say. It has nice colors, maybe. But now let’s take a closer look and see what happens.

You see, now I’m very close to the yellow-colored tree. I’m not looking at it from far away. No. Now I’m looking up to the crown of the tree. I have all this light playing around its trunk and I think it’s the more interesting picture. You cannot see the whole tree, just a very small part of it - but at the same time you “see” much more - because you have more details now.

Now, try to get even closer to see what happens.

Now I’m really close. I just see some leaves now. But because you know about trees in the fall, you might know that these leaves are on a big tree - but you cannot really see it. Just some colored leaves and one really dry one. Now, does this picture have the same mood as the first two? Decide for yourself.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to move into the scenery. Get really close and see what happens. It’s so easy but I had to learn it too. It’s so simple that you might not think about it. So - simply do it :-)

Take a shot as you normally would do. Then think “move in!” Take a few steps forward and take another shot. “move in!”... Just don’t be afraid to “cut” the object! See some famous movies - hey, they cut faces all the time. But this makes it interesting. So again: try it. Move In! :-)

For more information on this topic, you can also listen to the following TFTTF show:

TFTTF 63 - Move in