Telling your story, one photo at a time

Often I take many photos, however I am often concerned about the ability to relay to others what awesome and inspiring focus caused me to select that photo, that scene, that focus.  While I may relate to the sentiment shared by Sabrina in the 1995 version with Harrison Ford, I do not always know that I am able to share that story with others. 

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/aa/f6/1f/aaf61f818466a21057ed5f0eff704649.jpg)

With hope, to make my stories more easily shared with others, I have recently been experimenting with cropping.

Take our model photo: 

I have great memories associated with the photo: this is my daughter's first 'bike ride' on her balance bike.  Sadly, in this photo the focus and theme of the photo seems lost in the background.  I can't go back and retake this photo, but I have been learning about cropping and how to better focus the eye.

Traditionally, I have been trying to follow the rule of thirds. Adobe provides a basic summary on how to use this rule, and the intermittent benefits of breaking the rule in their article: Understanding the rule of thirds. 

 A brief summary:  the rule is a guide to help develop focus and variety in your photos. It is very common and often the grid is built into many camera settings to help with planning and positioning on the spot.  However, if, like me above,  you did not use the guides then it may be helpful to crop.  playing with different crops can also help train and teach the impact of the different focus or story. 

SO added to our model photo: 

As you can see the main focus is squarely centered in the middle box.  considering the rule of thirds, we would move the main focus into the different guides or on the crosses created by the divisions:

Moving to the Lower Left: 

Decreased the amount of sidewalks, removed the house,  potentially making it feel like they haven't gone as far.

Moving to the Lower right

Removes the stop sign and keeps the house, perhaps suggesting safer and homey environment. 

Moved to the upper left: 

Less sky, no house. with the sidewalk present:  it seems they have gone further.  the loss of the contrasting blue also seems to fade my daughter into the grass and greenery. 

Moved to the Upper Right:

Perhaps a little more balanced on the green, however, feels like the focus may be lost to the house. 

Based on these different cropping, I think I like the Lower Left the most, however it seems to have too much sky detracting from the surface.  I decided to crop in a little more to decrease the amount of blue sky. 

Several years ago, Canon conducted a study about the eye movements of different individuals. A graphic depiction of those results from DIYphotography.com: 

Photo from: https://www.diyphotography.net/canons-experiment-shows-how-obsessed-photographers-are-over-the-details/

With this in mind, maybe my positioning may not have an immediate appeal to everyone, however may provide variety to my collection, increase the focus for my photo and share a little more of my story.  the nice part is that the continued application of the rule of third increases the ease. Using cropping after a photo has been allows a second training help improve your 'on the spot' visualization.  Try to analyze what you see and how it improves your story.   Check in later to frame the focus and break the rule of thirds.

SlayPMR

Medical time out

Links to other articles and sources used:

https://www.adobe.com/ca/creativecloud/photography/discover/rule-of-thirds.html?ef_id=CjwKCAjwzruGBhBAEiwAUqMR8NQmWuaWQrom2COBz_RyHrCkvFeYJYInHphCDfJpzG1qIZUFZ0cGoRoCDAQQAvD_BwE:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!271592263377!b!!g!!!1413573331!55719868215&gclid=CjwKCAjwzruGBhBAEiwAUqMR8NQmWuaWQrom2COBz_RyHrCkvFeYJYInHphCDfJpzG1qIZUFZ0cGoRoCDAQQAvD_BwE

https://www.dpmag.com/blog/canon-s-eye-tracking-experiment/