What Caught Your Eye?

One of the questions I get asked occasionally is how do I know how to compose my flower photos?

In some ways, my approach is to use what Ansel Adams referred to as visualization or “the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure.”  If I can see the final image before I take it, I can identify what it is about the scene I want to capture. And then I know how to compose my photograph.

Even if I can’t see the final image in my mind, if I can identify what it was about a scene that made me want to take photograph, I find it easier to compose my image. I ask myself why am I stopping here to take a photo? Why here and not over there? Why this flower and not that flower?

In other words – what caught my eye?

Sometimes is can be a single flower

Or a group of similar flowers.

 

It can be a color

Or a combination of colors

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It can be the whole scene

Or it can be the little details

It can be a line

Or it can be something totally unexpected.

 

As you think about your own photography, what sorts of things catch your eye? And how can you use that information to create better photographs. I’d love to hear in the comments section below

Identifying what caught your eye and how to use that as a tool for composing your photographs is one of the skills we’ll be talking about during my Gardens of Philadelphia workshop from May 5 – May 11. For more information about the workshop, visit https://beautifulflowerpictures.com/store/photographing-the-gardens-of-philadelphia-may-2019/