Close Ups – Filling the Frame

An ordinary composition of a photograph will contain one or more subjects as focal points and a surrounding consisting of other objects. Based on all these elements, an observer will be able to recognize, the subject, the environment, and the message. All this is good, but what if another impact on the observer is desired? What if you want to leave little hints, in order to keep him guessing?

Boring surroundings may have a very bad effects on your subject, because, most probably, they will not have elements to balance the photographs, leaving a lot of empty spaces. An effective remedy to this is to fill the frame with your subject, so as to get rid of these empty spaces.

Sometimes it is even better to include nothing but your subject. For example, consider this situation in which you are photographing a wild animal at the zoo. With a normal composition, you will probably include the animal, the cage, and maybe some spectators. Getting rid of all the element except for the animal itself, may make the photograph look as if it was taken in the wild. The ambiguity resulted from close-ups lead observers use their imaginations to complete the picture .A close-up on two hands holding each others will strike a certain emotion that may be different from one person to the other, depending on his experience. Here, all you did is that you removed the subjects’ personalities, so as to give a space for the observer to think.

Portraits are usually a strong candidate for closeups. Sure you can take a great portrait with your subject in an interesting environment, but you can also get a very nice one too with just focusing on him. Filling the frame with your subject will produce a very personal look. Getting even closer to just include the face – sometimes with eye contact – can bring a feeling of amicability, as if you were staying face to face with the subject. Close-ups on other body parts produce great photos too; they may create an abstract feel, or emphasize a certain action.

Close-ups also suit still life photographs very well. This allows you to see usual things in very unusual ways, revealing many details that were not obvious before. This kind of photography is usually used in stock and product photography.

A frame can be filled by walking towards your subject, zooming on it, or by cropping a photograph. While zooming is an on-camera process, cropping is usually done using photo-editing software, giving you more flexibility to set your composition, but with sacrificing the image’s original size.

The simplest compositions may sometimes be the richest. So use your imagination, and make your audience use theirs.

Go to CanvasPrintsOnline to get your free ebook and get more photography tips.