May 2025, Attention Focusing

News about happenings at Deliberate Light and photography instruction (see Digital Photo Academy). My views on this month’s photography topic: Attention Focusing. To get these newsletters by email a month before they are posted here, go to the DeliberateLight.com website and click on Newsletter Signup.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. I am scheduled to teach workshops for Digital Photo Academy on June 7th at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. You can sign up here if interested.

· Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – intended for DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)

· Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

New Photo.

Camelia in Gold. This day was special. Winterthur is always an amazing place to walk through. But this day was our officially designated Hug Day. For the first time in over a year of pandemic isolation, we hugged our grandchild. Outside and wearing masks, but it was a hug. This camelia, the symbol of love in Asia, against a golden backdrop felt like a perfect expression of that day.

(Winterthur, PA, March 26, 2021)

For a more detailed, enlarged view and to get it printed, see it on my website.

VIEWS

Attention Focusing

I am not talking here about how to focus your camera, but rather about compositional techniques you can use to draw the attention of the viewer to your subject. Some ways to do that are brightness contrasts, color contrasts, pattern interruption, and blurring.

Brightness Contrasts. The eye is drawn to marked contrasts. To make you subject stand out more, put brighter subjects against a dark background and darker subjects against a bright background. The flag in this photo is certainly noticeable, but, compared to the following photo where the background foliage is a lot darker, it seems drab and just does not pop as much.

On the other hand, this darkish allium draws the eye against that field of brightness in the background.

Finally, this photo (a good illustration of use of frames, by the way) uses both bright against dark and dark against bright to draw the eye to the distant window in back.

Color Constrasts. Contrasting colors can also draw attention. In this photo, the very vivid red of the strawflower contrasts with the similarly bright background of green. Color contrasts do not have to be this vivid to help your subject stand out, but it helps.

Pattern Interruption. When an image contains a repeating pattern, the eye is drawn to interruptions in that pattern. In this image, the snakeskin pattern is interrupted by the somewhat different pattern of the snake’s head, and especially by that bright eye.

Blurring. A part of an image that is in sharp focus when other parts are blurred will draw attention. We already have examples of that in the camelia, the allium and the strawflower. Notice in each how your eye goes right to the in-focus flower. It also works nicely with people and animals. This blurring is accomplished in-camera using depth-of-field adjustments or with portrait mode in cellphone cameras. And, of course, one can always add blurring to a photo using photo editors like Lightroom or Snapseed.

Carl Finkbeiner

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