What lies behind the scene creates the bigger picture

Good photography has no rules; only guidelines.

After everything you have learned or been told or read you may actually feel that the rule of thirds composition just does not lend its appeal to a subject or a scene. Perhaps the very interesting bird, that is not moving much looks best just being captured dead center while his colors speak for themselves.

Perhaps your eyes are more pleased when you see a photograph of a heavy rock band with more graininess in it than is expected in most photographs. Except you just cannot seem to forget how you failed that assignment in class and how you have been trying to figure out for the last few years how to make grain disappear.

Maybe a small highlight and strong contrast is what you need to portray the beauty of a mother smiling at her child while leaving everything else dark. Still, in the back of your mind you hear the recalling echo of your tutor saying to you – “Dark is bad! Perfect exposure is good. You get an F!”

Possibly the image you took of the movement of a crazy sportsman tackling a player did not have a precise sharp point of focus but it worked miracles for the moment. Yet, you remember the agonizing pain you were in when your lecturer judged your image and heavily criticized you in front of the whole class so you would learn your lesson, while you hoped the earth would swallow you up.

Please do not revolt against these guidelines because they are there for a reason but it turns out that these are your choices that you should make when photographing. Knowing how to go against the grain of the guidelines is what is truly important to find the extra beauty in your image-to-be, even if it takes some practice.

Of course capturing that extra beauty is not only about your choice of technicalities but is sweetly combined with learning to capture feeling. Most people find this part quite difficult but in order to do this you need to know how to recognize feelings and the only way to do that is to see yourself feeling them so you know what they look like. This is how you learn to recognize them in other people, whether it is love, sadness, power, anger, pain, agony or any of the other millions available on the palette of emotion.

It is in the technical and emotional details of an image that brings the bigger picture to life. It is in the grain and the gruesome, the highlight and the happiness, the movement and the moment when the symbolism and compliment of science and emotion make a perfect partnership in your image.

So it is not necessarily about being bound by the rules and regulations of creative photography or by only capturing emotion but rather about how good you are at making the ‘broken’ rules work and how good you are at recognizing moments.

Before you pick up your tools and continue shooting, take this challenge. Leave your camera alone for one entire day. Pro-actively seek out emotion in your day and think of which scientific photographic technique you would combine it with. Go for it. Do not be afraid. Mix and match them and see what bigger picture you can come up with.

Images courtesy of and copyrighted to ShutterFliesPhotography