Beyond Auto Mode: A Guide to Taking Control of Your Photography

Chapter 12: PLACES AND THINGS

There are stunning vistas and interesting objects at every turn. From sunsets to beaches to urban landscapes or farmers’ fields, we can find incredible landscapes wherever we go. As we view landscapes with our eyes, we naturally focus on the elements we find captivating, all but ignoring the rest. Your camera, on the other hand, cannot do this. Rather, your camera treats the totality of the scene equally, unless you tell it otherwise.

Even though landscape images are typically photographed at an extended depth of field, the viewer needs something to draw her in. And you, the maker, need something to focus your image around. We can do this with our aperture choices.

The same holds true when photographing things like pets, food, statues, flowers, and more: The aperture we choose determines where our viewer looks and how the image is interpreted.

Beyond the exposure settings, compelling images of things rely on interesting compositions. (We learned about compositional rules [and how to break them] in Chapter 10.) Part of what makes one photograph stand out more than another is the way the photographer chose to organize the elements in the frame. When working with places and things, what you leave out of the frame is as important as what you include.

Photographing places and things is not that different from photographing people, and vice ...