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Artistic Questions

Why did you take this picture?

Discuss style and artistic aspects of photography
pstubley
 
Posts: 217

Why did you take this picture?

Post Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:06 pm


I have changed the way I am seeing things, and in working with the images in post-processing, based on a question my occasional photography teacher asked me:

Why did you take this picture? What drew your eye in the first place? (Cathy Church)

Of course, the subsequent comment from her about that particular image was "because it doesn't show that." She is very frank (but also very good at adjusting her level to her students' levels and goals), which is one of the reasons I always learn so much from her.

This question has changed the way I look at the initial capture, but it also affects how I look at the image when I am editing it. In several cases, I have severely cropped the image to get it to show what drew me in the first place. I have also revisited some earlier images that I really liked but somehow bothered me.

One example is my image of backlit grass. I have posted the original and the newly cropped one below. What drew my eye in the first place was how the grass glowed at the edges against the shaded trees in the background. The print (~14x11) showed this better than the online image, but when I looked at it again, it seemed like it could benefit both from cropping to show the glowing grass more clearly, as well as a rotation to help emphasize the strong vertical lines. And the 11x14 print is also more striking.

As a result of the editing, I am learning more about capturing the original image, to at least give myself the choice in editing between various distances from the subject (since using the full frame results in a better image than drastic cropping, no matter what the resolution).

Anyone else use this question? Or do you have other questions that changed the way you capture and edit.

Peter

Original:


Cropped (the thumbnail still loses the glow, but the image itself seems to have it much more):

timjackson
 
Posts: 4

Re: Why did you take this picture?

Post Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:13 am


It's an interesting question, because it cuts through to the fundamentals and "tightens up" one's approach.

It reminds me of the question I have often used: "What is it about this subject that attracts me, what is it that I am trying to catch?" And then, after (more or less) establishing the answer to that, I will often be challenged by having to develop my skills further in order to make the image that I visualised!


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