Focal point

Before you press the shutter release, you need to consider whether you’ve clearly defined your image’s centre of interest. One of the most frequent problems we see in photographs submitted to Digital Camera Magazine is backgrounds that detract from the power of the main subject. Whether it’s distracting bright patches, colours or shapes, or a poor choice of aperture, your picture can come unstuck with intrusive background detail that competes with the subject for attention. It’s far better to correct the problem in-camera, rather than relying on being able to fix an image during post production; this way you’ll make use of the full resolution of your camera’s sensor.

Look at this scene – what grabs your attention? Everything has a similar weight, the bear’s cropped off awkwardly, and the diagonal created by the building leads nowhere.

By identifying the strongest focal point and shifting position, the photographer has created a much more striking composition; giving the bull more space to look into on the right of the frame would strengthen the image further.

Keep it simple

Don’t be tempted to keep adding ingredients to your photograph, as you can easily end up with an overcooked image. Ask yourself what the most important element in front of you is – the thing that drew you to the scene, and made you put your camera to your eye in the first place – and arrange all the other elements so that they compliment this. Be aware that you don’t always have to make your focal point the biggest thing in the foreground. A smaller centre of interest, when positioned at a point of power, and isolated by a shallow depth of field or slow shutter speed to blur movement around it, or lifted from its surroundings by contrasting colours or textures, can really dominate a scene.