Fence, Maine. © Brenda Tharp Photography.
'Tis a joy to be simple, 'tis a joy to be free...so goes the Shaker song. With their simple, yet functional lifestyle, they really had something: Clarity of purpose. They designed furniture and tools and their houses to be clutter-free and functional. OK, it might seem a bit extreme to some of us, but there wasn't the confusing clutter in their lives that we often experience in ours today! We can learn from their life and even apply some of those ideas to good photography.
Today in my workshop I’m teaching in Maine, we went through the first rounds of critiques from images made last evening. We had a beautiful afternoon and sunset, but many had not really captured the essence of the place we were visiting. The reason? They were trying to include too much in their frame. Excited by the light and the scene in general, they forgot one key rule: KEEP IT SIMPLE. Some people like to add another word to that, but I prefer to keep it simple with just those three words!
I asked my students to articulate what they were going after with the picture, as a way of putting into words and into consciousness what they were excited about in the scene. The answers were very interesting sometimes! “Well, I really liked the lobster traps, and the barnacles on the pilings were neat; the shack across the lagoon had that nice flag on it, oh and I like the bright boat on the left, with the yellow buoys...” and so on. But just what IS the focus in that picture just described?
This is a common problem when everything around you is as colorful and interesting as it was at that afternoon! But in order to make a great image, we all need to remember to keep our compositions clean and simple. Remember that less is often more, and often the best way to make a strong photograph is to first acknowledge what it is that you like in the scene, and then work to eliminate everything in the picture that doesn’t support the main area of interest. Watch the edges of the frame for unwanted clutter, merging lines within the scene or lines going out of the frame. Be careful not to have objects cut off awkwardly at the edge of the frame, and watch your background to see how it's affecting your image.
When I made this image, I had several windows behind the fence in certain areas, and a huge knot hole in another area. So to really bring out what I saw, the deep blue wall against that white fence, I had to seek out a section that would give me clean lines, with no breaks on the background, and let the fence be the strongest line and subject. I had to work on the amount of space for white fence against blue wall, getting the proportions to where I felt they were strong. I really loved the line of it and the repetition of the pickets as they climbed the hill along the house. Because the wall was in shade, the light gray siding went blue from the open shade. But the fence was sort of back and side-lit, and receiving bounced light from a gray macadam street, so it literally glowed. By keeping this composition really simple, I created a strong graphic study of just two elements.
