Traveling the Journey of Light | Photoblog Thoughts, feelings, and techniques behind the photography of Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston

How to Create More Interest in Your Composition by Hinting at Your Subject - Tractor Series Part IIPosted by drfl on September 15th, 2009

In yesterday’s post I shot through the prairie grass and focused on the tractor. In today’s image I was still shooting through the grass, but the real objective was to subtlety hint for the real subject.  The goal is to force the viewer to first examine the photograph and then look deeper for the intended subject. This creates more interest in the composition since upon first viewing, the subject may appear to be the in focus grass, but then the eye is immediately led to the bright headlight and then to the form of the tractor.

For this result, I kept the depth of field intentionally shallow at f/6.3 and focused on the grasses in the front. The objective is to use an aperture that gives us an impression of our subject while not blurring it completely. I used aperture bracketing to find the perfect balance of blur and form. Bracketing is capturing a range of images at slightly different settings in order to ensure that you have the highest selection to choose from in post-processing. With digital, this is great as additional images cost nothing. Most bracketing is done with exposure, however, I find myself bracketing aperture quite often in these types of cases. This technique can be attempted with the subject behind or in front of another object. Experiment with different positioning and apertures in order to find an effective combination.

To recap:

1. Experiment with focusing on an object either closer than your true subject or further away to subtlety blur the intended subject.
2. Bracket the aperature to achieve the desired look.

Technical Details:
Canon 5d Mark II, 70-200 f/4l @ 109mm, f/6.3, 1/13 second