COMPOSITION - deciding what your subject is

When you first start making photographs, you often end up capturing everything in a scene, without fully realising that you may be drawn to just a small part of the scene in front of you. This is why, when you review the results later you think ‘mmm that’s not quite how I remembered it’.
There is a reason for this. You see your intuition registered an object in the scene in front of you, even though it may have been a small part of the scene. But what your intuition does not tell you is that you need a telescope to actually see it. So even though we don’t have telescopic vision, we can be aware of what we are looking at and change lenses to bring it closer.

The series of frames below as an example, illustrates this.
A) A view from your hotel balcony as for ‘some reason’ your intuition drew you to it. But there seems to be no focal point.
But maybe the train was what you thought you had captured? Of course when you saw the shot later, the train is way too small.
B) but when you try and enlarge the train it is too pixelated and no good. But nevertheless the train actually was the subject.
C) is what you should have captured had you chosen the right lens.

So the lesson here is to analyse the scene in front of you. Why are you here? why do you want to shoot it? is there something you are missing?
Oh it’s the train, then maybe I should use a different lens to bring it closer? Yes.
Both A and C were shot from the exact same spot, only the lens choice has changed.

All photography and text © Jon Davison 2022.


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