Seeing with Better Eyes (Good Photography)

The psychology of seeing and how it affects composition. Your eye (and lens) sees something, but your eye is connected to your brain …. which interprets what you see….. it adjusts color balance, ignores un-important things, tries to “edit out” those things you don’t want to see. You now must re-program your mind so that you really do see everything.

• Here’s my sample photo. A simple case in point:

It's your first time to visit Las Vegas and you see one you like and take a snapshot. You see the outstanding hotel when riding along the road…. but not the car window wiper at the bottom, the car mirror above, the lamp post on the right, or even the half cut building on the right…… your mind ignores those distractions for you.

Here’s what you must learn to do: Eliminate unwanted distractions …. either by cropping them out during printing (like I just did) or move in closer and crop them out with the camera and lens.

Or…… you could think about what you really want to show …. walk around, crouch down, look at it harder …. and then shoot.

The point is you must concentrate and think harder about what it is you want to show… and force yourself to see and eliminate those things you don’t want to show. This should become habit…. you should practise doing this with everything that “catches your eye”. Your eye WILL begin to see better … and you will begin to think about the lighting, the angle, the “feel” of those things as you look around. Sometimes you might feel weird or cursed because of the way you “stare at” - study - things, but it is essential that you develop this habit if you really want to get better. To become a true serious amateur or top-notch professional you need to be constantly studying subject matter, light, composition, etc AND figuring out how you want that shot to look in print.

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Source:Photography course