Avoid Clutter

In my previous post, I insisted on keeping the frame filled meaningfully. The important part here is "meaningfully", or in other words, we shouldn't clutter a frame just to fill it.

For example, consider the following shots:

In the first image, the frame is very well filled, but the frame is too busy to have a 'pull'. The second shot with my daughter is again nice, but there is too much background details close to her face which distracts the viewer's attention. In the third shot, the background ducks are adding the clutter to the frame. These different types of 'cluttering' prevent the shots to have clear focus points. How can we avoid this?

Blur the Background

One easy way to increase the focus on your subject is to blur the background. You can do this by

1. using a lens with larger focal length ("high zoom");
2. moving close to the subject;
3. using a larger aperture (low f-number) of the lens;
4. any combination of the the above three.

Note that (1) and (2) above might contradict each other, but not always; also, to achieve (3), you have to move away from the "Auto" mode, preferably to an "Aperture Priority" mode. The application of this concept can be seen in the shot on the right: here I used a 120mm lens to blur the background. Unfortunately, I accidentally used F/16, which tried to keep both fore and backgrounds both in focus, which reduced the bluriness of the background; I could've simply used an F/5 here to produce a better shot.

Isolate the Subject

Even the previous technique of "blurring the background" is a way to isolate the subject. But a direct approach is to change your vantage point to avoid any cluttering coming from the background.

In both shots above, I just changed my angle to remove the disturbing background details; note that, the duck here is the same as the one from the beginning of this post. Both the shots here also applies the previous technique of blurring the background (even if there is not much background here.)

Wait and Go in Close

Sometimes, we on principle don't want to avoid the background or blur it. This happens when you want location shots -- i.e. to record that "I was there." Even then you must avoid clutter. For that, you can either wait for the background to de-clutter or try a closer shot to minimize the noise from the background. Take a look at the following examples:

The first shot here is taken a few seconds after the shot I included at the beginning of this post. I still wanted to show that the photo was taken at a park and hence I included the background people. But in this shot, my daughter ducked to play with a ball and thus the people in the background are not interfering with her face any more; I also kept the background a bit blurred. In the second shot, both my wife and the University of Toronto building are both in good focus. To get the shot clean, I:

• waited for a while to have the frame clear of the people in the background;
• went close to her and got a tight frame to avoid covering any extra background and keep her in a larger portion of the frame;
• added flash in day light, so that my wife is a tiny bit more illuminated than the background so that she still get the first attention in the photo.

Always try to go in close and take a shot with waist up for you location shots. Otherwise, your subject will be unimpressive in front of massive landmarks. For example, if you try to cover your partner and the statue of liberty both from head-to-toe in a shot, your partner will occupy only a 5% of the shot and nobody can recognize the person in the shot later on.

But Add Interesting Elements

While keeping the shot clean, sometimes you have to let one or two extra elements into the frame to make the shot more meaningful.

In the first shot here, I waited for a human to walk into the frame. It adds a story to the shot than an empty snow-covered landscape. The boat on the second shot is much more meaningful than the man on the first shot; it emphasizes the massiveness of the Niagara waterfalls. Also note that the man and the boat are inserted at the 'rule-of-third' attention points.