Visual arts fall into one of two categories, they're either additive or subtractive.
For instance, painting is an additive art, where you start with nothing (a blank canvas) and add what you want to it till you're satisfied.
On the other hand, photography is subtractive. You start with a viewfinder full of stuff (landscape in this case) and remove things until all that's left is what you want to see, with all other distractions removed.
Herein lies the artistry in photography, knowing what to leave out of the image when you take it, or what to remove through cropping or cloning later.
You will have noticed that this image of a cloud and shoreline rocks, taken on Smerwick Bay on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula, is a somewhat unusual shape for a photo.
That's because I took the photo with the camera on its side (portrait orientation) and then croppoed the resulting frame to an even more severe form, all to achieve the composition I wanted, and to remove elements that I couldn't help including in the 2x3 aspect ratio image I took, but that detracted from the image that I wanted to finally create.
Filename - cloud sea rocks 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/40sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Smerwick Bay, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland
This image - 400x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Polariser used to enhance colours and emphasise cloud.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.