Building Viewer Interest In An Image

Building Viewer Interest In An Image

by William Lulow

Following up a bit on the last article, I thought I would describe how I go about making what I think is an interesting composition for a landscape photograph.

First: The scene has to be one that I, personally find interesting. Here is a recent example:

This image was made in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. I had to hike a bit from the parking lot to find this spot which wasn’t that far, and I’m sure others have come up with the same or similar image from this place. What grabbed my attention right away were the various compositional elements: mountains, sky, water, reflection and plenty of foreground. This photograph was made with my Canon 90D DSLR, fitted with my 20mm f/2.8 lens. I knew I wanted to emphasize the foreground so I picked a small lens opening, f/16 and because of that I had to increase my ISO to 200 and reduce my shutter speed to 1/80th of a second. Sometimes you need to use all parts of the “exposure triangle” to get the effect you want. That’s when I used my trusty tripod. When I travel, I use a really compact but sturdy tripod that collapses to 15″:

I pick a place to set it up, then mount the camera. For this shot, I wanted to be sure to get enough foreground to kind of frame the mountains to keep viewer interest. When shooting landscapes with a wide angle lens, the foreground is emphasized much more than the background, which is often small and insignificant by comparison. The background simply adds completion to the composition, but it isn’t something that’s important in an image made with a wide-angle lens. In this case, however, the foreground is adding to the impact of the background because here, the objects in the background are really large! Here’s another image where the opposite is true:

Here, you can barely see what is in the background, but most of it is occupied by the sky. But the main focus is on the objects in the foreground, and it’s those elements that make the composition strong.

In this image, interest is maintained by the low camera angle and the good depth-of-field, making most objects in this landscape sharp. The stark Black&White tones also add visual interest to retain viewers’ attention.

The thing that all three of these images have in common is that each was viewed, contemplated, photographic techniques decided upon and executed.

Second:  The scene has to have some compelling lighting elements. Here is an example:

In this image, it is obvious what the lighting is. The colors are so saturated that it is very pleasing to the eye. Notice also, how the horizon is placed very low in the scene. That emphasizes the sky and the orange color. Here is another where the lighting is compelling:

Again, the sky is the main focus, because of the light on the clouds and the horizon line is placed low in the frame. Here’s another one where the light was the main focus:

The elements that make this image strong are the lead-in lines from the railings and the highlights on the rowboats themselves, leading out to the low-tide water.

Third: The image should be interesting to view. It should have some elements that might capture the viewer’s attention. Here is one such image:

This picture was made as a season’s greeting card for an investment firm with offices in the Met Life building. It was a time exposure. I set my 4×5 view camera up in the middle of Park Avenue in New York City around 4 PM, just before the sun set. I made several images on about 5 or 6 sheets of film. I waited there to make sure no one accidentally bumped into the tripod, until the sun went down and the lights in the buildings came on. I then made several double-exposures on those same sheets of 4×5 film to get the saturation I needed. The streaks from the lights on the cars going by were made with the extremely slow shutter speed. Yet, the daylight and the shapes of the buildings were perfectly sharp. Exposures here were f/22 with the shutter open for 10 seconds to 30 seconds. Speed of the film was ISO 100.

This image is visually interesting because of the location, the lighting and the movement shown in blur.

Here is kind of an opposite image made with a very fast shutter speed (1/1000th of a second with about a 200mm lens, in order to capture the movement of the jumping dolphin:

These last two images were important and maintain viewer interest because of the subject matter and how it was rendered.

Again, all of these images were deliberately set up to emphasize a composition, a compelling use of colors, lights and darks and keeping visual interest within the frames themselves.