Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the size and breadth of what we see through the view finder of our cameras. We see only the "big picture" and miss the beauty in the smaller details. It is always a good idea to step in close and see what happens when we narrow our point of view.
Often we see a piece of art or sculpture we find appealing and so we want to capture it for ourselves.
This is a statue at the Cape Fear Botanical Garden I particularly like. I love the lines of the woman, the curves and the way she stands. Unfortunately, I have never been particularly happy with this photo. It's far too busy. You can see the gazebo in the background. There is too much negative space around the statue. The tree trunk behind the statue is extremely distracting as far as focal points go. I've kept this image mostly because I still really like the statue but I have to be honest and say it is not a very good photo. Instead, it is what many photographers would call a "snapshot." Not that there is anything wrong with snapshots, but they, by definition, miss the mark when it comes to art.
I took this photograph 8 months after I took the first one. The first was, I should note, one of the first photographs I took with my Sony F717. This photograph was taken with my Canon 300D.
Notice the difference in the two images. The newer one does not show the entire statue. Instead, it focuses on the far more emotive angle of the face. The angle from which the photograph was taken is different as well. The shadowing on the face is part of the mood of the image. In all, this is a stronger and more artistic approach to the same subject. The major difference is the closer approach. Instead of photographing the whole statue and losing the gorgeous details in the carving that are a part of what I love about this piece, I stepped up to her and took a much tighter shot. The interesting thing about these two shots is that the other key feature of the statue that appealed to me, the curves, is apparent in both the wide and the tight shot. So by stepping in, I lost nothing but gained an awful lot.
A similar process can be seen in my choice between this first shot and the one below.
The first is a pretty straight-forward approach to a piece of country kitsch. It's a water pump. There is nothing about the image to
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