Chapter 9 seeing like a camera

An important part of taking a photograph is deciding how you want to frame the subject.  I sometimes wish that I had included more in my photographs.  I go into light room and with the picture on a bigger screen I can easily see parts I wish were included or things that were cut off at the edge of the frame.  Knowing that I am working on a computer and cropping is easy to do with a digital file I think I need to take a step back and include more in the frame of the photograph.  Then I won’t have to worry about cutting off part of the subject. 

I think I am looking at the background of the frame more often now since we started talking about it in the class critiques.  I try not to have the horizon line going straight through the subject of the photo.  I also have started to practice changing settings faster so I can capture what I see before it passes.  In the portrait project I practiced using a faster shutter speed to catch some candid shots of a moving subject.  I realized that working with an animal subject it was hard to catch them in the right spot.  If you took too long to change the settings then the subject had already moved and I could not get that same picture back.  I also had to make my subjects comfortable or they tried to leave.  I wanted to let them be themselves but at the same time I wanted a picture of them together which required me to balance moving them, which made them more likely to run off, and just following them. 

In my final project when taking landscapes I often used a longer depth of field like the landscapes in the book.  I also had to plan out when I could take pictures.  I didn’t have the best weather to work with but I still needed to catch the scene in good lighting conditions.