Back to the title of this post, what do you want to include in your photos. Well I guess the first thing is to find yourself a subject or subjects, and that can be absolutely anything you want. Then you might want to think about how you are going to frame your photo to include the subject. Do you want the whole of the subject or just a part of the subject? Do you want to show the subject in it's environment or do you want to keep it in isolation? Which aspect and what angle do you want to use to look at the subject? Where in the image do you want the subject to be? What I'm talking about is photo composition.
Now composition is a big subject and there are lots of books written that cover this subject in vast detail but for a beginner photographer I think this would be far too daunting. There are a load of so called rules of composition which I think should really be termed suggestions, but this is just my opinion. There are certainly a few things that should perhaps be avoided but then again you may want to use them on purpose. In the end I believe you should compose your images as you like them, but more importantly try lots of different layouts, angles. When you review them pick your favourites and then try to decide why you prefer one shot over another. In this way you can take more photos that you like and probably that other people will like too.
So what things do I think you should try to avoid? Well firstly if you are trying to include the whole subject, make sure you do. Having odd bits missing can make things look odd. Of course if that is what you are trying to achieve then chop bits off where you like. Try to avoid things in the background from detracting from your subject. Things like trees coming out of the top of your subject's head or perhaps areas of strong colour or bright lights. Try and keep horizons horizontal and vertical lines vertical, or make sure the viewer can tell that the frame is tilted on purpose.
Some suggestions to improve your composition. Place your subject off centre with more space on the side where the subject is facing so the subject has a space to move towards. Even if the subject is not facing in a particular direction they often look better away from the centre but there are always exceptions so you decide. This is often called the rule of thirds and it applies to up and down as well as left and right. In landscape photography photos where the horizon or some other horizontal feature is very close to the centre can be improved by moving the line either up or down in the frame.
If you have more than one subject, try to have an odd number as quite often pairs of subjects can feel odd. I'd try this one out and see what you think. I think that as the number of subjects rises that the difference between odd and even numbers becomes less noticeable.
Try to include colours that go together. There's loads of information about colour theory but I think a lot of it is personal taste. I like blue and yellow, or green and red, or blue and red etc. Perhaps the thing is to try to not include too many colours, especially in large areas. Quite often three main colours is more than enough in an image.
Look for repetition of shapes in the scene. This could be either lots of the same thing or different things that have a similar shape. Maybe there's lots of lines or circles or squares or maybe even just bits of similar curves or angles. Having the repeating patterns can help help to pull an image together
I think the most important suggestion I've been given is to get closer to your subject. Make sure that anyone else looking at your photos is sure which is the main subject. Perhaps get so close that you can't include the whole of the subject up to the point where you are abstracting the main subject. It might not always be possible to get closer to your subject but if you can it's always worth trying it and see how it turns out.
Here's a composition example that I took on Sunday. I've positioned the tree off centre and I think it is obvious that this is the main subject of the photo. There are just three main colours in the photo, the blue sky, the orangey yellow leaves and the green grass. The shape of the clouds, particularly the one near the top left are mimicking the shape made by the leaves on the tree. The trees in the background are also repeating the tree shape as is the shadow of the tree itself. The horizon is very close to the third of the way up the picture and I think it's level.
Another photo from Sunday which was taken under a tree where there was hundreds of fallen crab apples. I took lots of photos from different angles and included different numbers of apples in the shots. I picked this one because I got in very close, this was as near as my lens could focus. It's using the idea of repetition of the round shapes and even the odd leaf if almost round. Again there are few colours, effectively with the soil so dark there's really just yellow and bits of red. Perhaps there's no single main subject but I think the repetition makes up for that. Let me know what you think.
OK, I think I've waffled on enough about composition for now. I will very likely have a another post much later with a bit more about composition and I'm sure I will mention composition when covering other subjects. Next time I think I'll start to tackle the subject of picture types and how they differ in the way the camera decides on its setting.
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