How to See What Others Miss Through Your Lens
Doest it matter if you have the latest phone camera or an expensive full-frame mirrorless camera, yet, your photos might feel lifeless? Sharpness matter? Well, intention matters more. Feelings matter more. Imagination matters more. How?
This is the second blog post in the series: Beyond the Click. Keep on reading!
What Sharpness Can’t Do
You’ve probably seen gear ads or reviews that rave about all the cool features the new model brings to the table. More megapixels, sharper images, less noise. All those things have their value. I’d be lying if I said I don’t pay attention to them. But something I’ve learned over the years is that you can have a super sharp, noise-free photo… and nothing interesting to show.
On the other hand, sometimes you just get that perfect moment of people interacting with each other, with great facial expressions. You can clearly see there’s something important happening there, but one person is slightly out of focus.
How do you know if this is a true keeper, even though it’s not sharp enough? Ask yourself: If I look at this photo in 10 years, will I remember this very moment? If your answer is yes, or most likely yes, then you have a keeper regardless of the technical aspects.
People look at old photos because they say something important to them. You might take photos because it feels cool and everyone is doing it, but the ones you come back to later… you won’t care if they’re sharp enough.
How do you know if the photo you’re taking has something in it, or it’s just a pretty empty photo?
The Power of Visual Cues
Visual cues are your answer. When you look at a scene, beyond the surface beauty, what else is drawing your attention? What makes you wonder?
Examples of visual cues include facial expressions, emotional interactions between people, movement, a specific light that sets a mood, a bird flying in at the right time, or even a tree that stands out because it’s oddly placed.
It’s easy at first to confuse visual cues with “pretty things.” But we’re not talking about pretty, we’re talking about interesting. Every compelling photo guides the viewer’s eye to one or more points in the frame, from most to least interesting. Faces, for example, are usually the first thing we notice, then animals, and so on.
The more you practice, the more natural it becomes. Even when you’re not taking a photo, just walking around, your eyes will start scanning for interesting visual cues. You begin to photograph with your eyes; the camera is just a brush for your painting.
Great! You’re seeing the cues. But how do you frame them so they tell a story or trigger the storyteller mode in the viewer’s mind? A photo by itself doesn’t tell the whole story, but it can spark the imagination and make the viewer build the rest of the story in their head. And that’s one of our goals.
Composition as “Storytelling”
When it comes to composition, how you frame the scene in a photo, there are plenty of “rules,” like the rule of thirds. They’re useful when you’re starting out, but once you’ve practiced enough, you won’t want to be tied to them. Think of them as options you can choose from depending on what you want to achieve.
You’ve already spotted the interesting visual cues. Now it’s about how you present them in a way that makes sense, or in some cases, in a way that doesn’t make sense, if your goal is to provoke a stronger reaction in the viewer. It all comes back to your intent.
A person centered in the frame is “against the rule,” right? Well… it depends. Sometimes placing someone right in the middle is exactly what makes the photo work. When you’re starting out, it helps to try different compositions of the same scene and see what resonates. Over time, this experimentation becomes second nature.
Yes, you can always crop the photo later in post-processing, before posting or printing. But the closer you get to the final composition at the moment of shooting, the better. That’s when you know you’ve truly “seen” the frame with your own eyes.
And there’s one more ingredient you need for this to work: curiosity.
Curiosity over Perfection
We, human beings, are curious creatures. We always want to know what’s going on. Why do you think we’re addicted to TV shows? We need to know how it ends. And once we know, we need the next one. Curiosity is built into us, it’s what made us thrive.
The same applies to photos. Both from the photographer’s perspective and from the viewer’s. As a photographer, you see a scene and wonder: what’s going on? That curiosity makes you take the photo. As a viewer, you see the photo and wonder: why does that woman have that expression? or is that bird talking? You’ll never get the answer, but the act of wondering is the hook.
So, be curious. Don’t chase perfection, chase curiosity. That’s what your audience wants from you, and that’s what you want from your photos.
This is how you start noticing things others don’t. You have to exercise this: turn your eyes into a camera that’s always with you. Once you grab your actual camera, it’ll flow naturally.
Here’s my suggestion: next time you raise your camera to snap a photo, pause and ask yourself: What in this moment is worth freezing? What are the interesting visual cues? Does this scene trigger my imagination or a feeling? Will I ever look at this photo again? Is everyone else taking the same photo right now? How can I capture something different?
It might feel like a lot of thinking before pressing the shutter. But trust me, once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. And you’ll end up with a much more interesting set of photos from your vacation. Even if you’re visiting Paris, like everyone else.