Rocks with person
Rocks without person
I’m sure we’ve all been on a trip where you saw some incredible rock formations or other beautiful scenery. The overwhelming grandeur of it all made it such an amazing sight. Perhaps you took a picture, with great expectations, only to be a disappointed that somehow the picture didn’t have anywhere near the impact you thought it would.
Often the reason for this is that when we witness something monumental we mentally scale the size of the scene by other things we see (like people or buildings) in the surroundings. If those clues aren’t included in the picture we take, the impact is often lost in the resulting photograph.
Tip No. 5
Include some of those off-picture clues in your photos. The simplest of these is to include people, a shack, fence or some other object(s) in the scene where people intuitively know their size. This enables us to scale the rest of the scene.
As example of this, look at the two pictures. The first one tells the story of big rocks, without any sense of how truly large they are. In the second picture it is easy to judge the magnitude of them and, if you’ve got an active imagination, it tells the story of one man doing what he could to save mankind.
Bill teaches Photography Basic and Intermediate Workshops as part of the Art Club offering of courses.
Photography Basic – January 8 and 15 and again on February 17 and 24
Photography Intermediate – March 4 and 11
For more information see the signup folders in the Expressions Gallery of the Arts and Crafts Building. Please note that listings are posted in the Gallery only two months phprior to the workshop.