One thing I’ve learned over the years in photography, details matter.
I’m a self-admitted purist when it comes to my photography. While I enjoy the artistic interpretations many of the photographers I know create, for most of my work, I photograph what I see and leave it at that (mostly).
Compositions and what is in your frame
In this original image, you can see that it’s a bit messy. The stalk on the left and the green grasses along the bottom just don’t do anything to help the image look good.
The main focus here is of course the color. But, that one piece that is horizontal across the frame with a little curve at the end is really the star of this image.
Cropping to remove details
Cropping in from the left and up from the bottom, helps to push the viewer to and accentuate the color of that one piece of curvy grass.
While cropping removed most of what didn’t work for the composition, there is still that one bit of green grass in the corner.
Here I removed the green grass in the bottom left corner by using the healing tool in Photoshop. Then I brightened the image up a bit in Lightroom. This gives me what I wanted. The feeling that I had when I saw these fuzzy yellow grasses. They’re kind of magical, aren’t they?
Paying attention to the details in your frame while you’re taking the image is one way to start creating better compositions.
That said, sometimes you will want to leave room around your edges for editing purposes. Straightening and rotating an image will cut some of that out, but you’ll want to make sure you still have enough of the main subject to work with.
The lens I used for capturing details
Yes, I could have grabbed my macro lens and I almost did. The Klehm Arboretum is definitely worthy of a macro lens and tripod. But I’m stubborn and I love using my Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di VC USD Lens.
