Why Your Photos Suck
I’m Jessica Sterling. I’m a portrait and events photographer based here in Los Angeles, California. Today I want to talk a little bit about why your photos suck, or more correctly some things that some people do in their photos that make them less cool. These are my thoughts as to why.
Photos with Impact
The thing that I try to do when I’m capturing a picture, is try to make it have some impact. Let’s say for instance the person is centered and their head is right in the middle of the frame and there is a ton of stuff on the side and their head is really small. There’s nothing really interesting about anything that’s going on around them. It’s just that the person who’s taking the picture happened to be standing six or 10 feet away from them and picked up the camera and took it at their height.
You know, you see a lot of snapshots like that: family pictures and similar. And to me it’s just the mark of an amateur photographer when something is dead centered but not in a striking, awesome Instagram sort of way. It’s just sort of “oh, I’m going to take a picture of you.” So one thing to do right away is take a couple of steps forward. Maybe put your person you’re photographing slightly off center. If there’s something around them that’s interesting, then it becomes like an environmental portrait.
When I’m doing a composition, I think of diagonal lines. Because diagonal lines have more energy than horizontal lines. It’s like lightning. So I’m always looking for something to add a little bit more to the photo, where the person I’m photographing seems like they’re reaching out. Now even if you’re taking pictures of a cute newborn baby that’s so cute and cuddly, you still want people to see the photo and think, “wow, what a striking child. Incredibly gorgeous baby.” You want to have something of impact. So to me composition is super, super key to making your photos not suck.
What’s the Central Idea?
The other thing is a picture should have some type of central idea that it’s trying to communicate. It doesn’t have to be this long concept, but for example “this is a photograph of Janet”. Not where there are tons of things to look at and none of them are really stand out. Your eye automatically goes to something first when you glance at a photo, it should go to something. And if that something stands out, that’s the thing you want people to look at first. And other things are sort of just distractions. You look at a picture and you think “oh there’s picture people here. And then there’s this weird tree.” The mental process goes from looking from the person to the weird tree. It can kind of be where your eyes start somewhere. It needs to start somewhere.
At the beginning of the story has to start on page one. So like where’s page one? Where’s chapter one on this picture? And then they can travel. You just don’t want to have other things in there that are kind of off topic. Unless that’s part of your story. But when I see a snapshots with people and then there’s some person and back there or some random thing in the back, I try to frame things out that don’t have something to do with the moment. The story that I’m trying to express. I think maybe story sounds too lengthy.
So composition, having an idea. “This is a photo of ___”. So your photos should have all those things. It should have striking composition. It should express a particular Haiku idea, and it should be impactful, and not have a lot of distractions. Everything in the picture should help tell your Haiku.
I hope that’s helpful, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and blog to keep up to date with all our content. Also be sure to leave comments on what you thought about these tips and what you would like to hear more about in the future! And as always, remember to get out there and capture your own images of life.
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