Balancing Framing.

Framing is the last major rule I'll be talking about. When you think framing you probably think of an object which surrounds a photo. In photography it's a very similar concept, except the object is surrounding the subject.

Yes, the parachute can be a subject, and yes the lines of the parachute can

lead out towards the outer ring of the parachute. Does one of the lines lead

to a paratrooper? Sure, but I argue in this photo he's not the center of

interest, the parachute is, and the frame is the sky.

In the photo above an object [the parachute] is surrounding a subject [the paratrooper], this is essentially framing.

   But what if I told you our subject was the parachute and the frame was the sky?

 [Insert the Keanu Reeves "Whoa" here]

Here I've cropped and rotated our original photo to have the soldier in a

center of interest.

   I personally like that idea better. The paratrooper is now an after thought. The real question here is, which of the following did you think first? "Wow nice parachute, oh and look at the soldier!" or "Look at that soldier, wow he's surrounded by a parachute!"

   Is he still framed? Sure, but in my opinion if you accept the sky is the frame and the parachute is the subject, this photo works at lot better in my opinion as an example of framing. Also, as is customary, it ties in with last weeks rule of balance

You can see the Subject is clearly in at least one point of interest. We also

have leading lines. But for me, this not only cheating, but it's also just not

as good as the original. Let me emphasize, "for me," because it's all subjective.

   But what if we wanted the paratrooper as our subject? How could we make that our primary focus?

   Well, lets try it out, on our left is a crop. To me, this is a bad crop. Why? Because I've completely changed my center of interest. Practice how you play. If you stop worrying about what you're seeing the view finder because,

"Oh, I'll just crop it later,"

you're already on the bad habit path. Having bad habits very rarely leads to having good results.

   Back to the photo. Our subject is, in my opinion, clearly the paratrooper. But he's a little dark. And as we've already discussed, light is what draws our eyes.


   So lets look at the basics. Is our subject in a point of interest? Yes. Is he/she in Two points? No, but at least we got one. Rule of Thirds, Check. Do we have framing? Sure, the parachute frames our paratrooper well. Do we leading lines to our subject? Sure.

Ultimate question, is this CROP better than our PHOTO? I don't know. It's all subjective after all. If you where to ask me, no simply because I know it's a crop. But I honestly really like the balance of the original. Also, in the crop I really dislike that our soldier still isn't really that clear.