• Sunset at Largs
    Sunset at Largs
Close×

Hi Vikki,

One compositional tool that has been about for a long time is the juxtaposition, the idea of taking one subject and placing it against another to form a point of comparison.

For the moment you have the makings of that juxtaposition; in the foreground we have the seagulls mooching about in an almost social guise, waiting for the next meal, while on the pier you have some humans doing pretty much the same thing.

By way of scale, the people on that pier look rather small, but there is a useful technique you can apply the next time you take a similar photo.

When you made this photograph you would probably have been only a few metres away from the gulls but about a 50 metres away from the pier.  Now, if you were to walk another 5 metres away from the gulls you would double the distance between you and them, effectively making them half as small in the picture while the pier would remain similar in size.

Now for the fun part; if you zoom the lens to double the previous focal length you will make the gulls appear the same size as they were in the first photo, but make the pier and the people on it, twice as big. Doing this would make the juxtaposition we mentioned a moment ago more apparent to the audience.

There is humour in this photograph you just need to make it clearer for your audience.

Cheers,

Anthony.

comments powered by Disqus