Recently I realised that one of the underlying issues with my photography is the fact that it almost never has a proper subject in it. This is most prevalent in my landscape photography. after all if there is a pretty mountain, castle or other scenery to photograph, why should there be a subject?
Well I suppose a simple answer is to draw the eye towards something when there are no obvious leading lines, or perhaps to give a sense of scale but mostly to give the eye a destination, otherwise we may just get lost in grand sceneries. However it’s not always easy to find a subject, in particular when taking photography on the spot. Let’s look at the example below:
These are the three bridges crossing the Firth of Forth between Edinburgh and Fife. In the foreground you see the newest bridge, the Queensferry crossing (I think shortly after it opened), then the Forth Road Bridge and in the back the Forth Bridge. However, apart from those there’s not much in the picture, no one standing on the shore, no boat and you have to squint to see the only bird in it. In other words, it’s pretty but not very interesting. Would there have been anything to be done to fix this given that this was taken at twilight from the ramparts of Blackness Castle in a bright but windy November day? Probably not, and I’m not about to add a fake subject in photoshop as I’d probably get the scale wrong anyway.
Sometimes photography is a game of chance but perhaps my main fault is to always see the background but rarely what’s closer at hand. There are exceptions of course, this shot from North Berwick taken a few years ago, though not as well composed as it could be, demonstrates the sort of idea I need to work on more to really bring out the subject of a photograph to life.
Seeing isn’t always as easy as it may seem…