Ken’s Tips For Your Pics: Framing the pic!
Claire has sent me in this lovely photo of her son Bruno. I do like pictures of children that are engrossed in play, where the camera is merely recording a moment rather than spoiling it, as happens when you ask the subject to smile for the camera. Even worse is when the poor child is asked to say “cheese” and then has to produce a rictus grin that doesn’t look anything like natural glee. This picture avoids that and you can see Bruno is having a wonderful time playing in the sunshine.
Bruno
The cropping of this picture is very tight which usually cuts out any distracting features in the background, helping the eye focus on the main subject – as it does in this photo. In this case I think this picture would have been improved if we had seen just a little more of what is going on. We can see what we think is a rope swing but we are not really sure and the way that all of Bruno’s limbs have been cut off by the edges of the frame creates a slightly uncomfortable feel to the image. Bruno is having a great time but we don’t really know why. The way the left arm sticks out of the photo means that your eye is drawn out of the picture instead of toward Bruno’s face.
Of course Claire has her memories of what is happening, so the picture makes more sense to her than to us which again is an interesting facet of photography and how a photograph can mean different things to different people.
To recap, this is a wonderful photo of Bruno’s joy at play but may have been improved by taking a step back to show more of what is going on.
Thanks for sending in the pic Claire and keep up the high standard.
Thanks Ken. That is very useful information.
By claire at 9:10 pm on Aug 1, 2010