Layering a photograph is a great digital photography technique. It creates visual complexity and when combined with effective composition, it helps to lead your viewers eye to your main subject while maintaining visual interest.

Here’s a few techniques:

Look to place items such as plants, other people even parts of your main subjects body like their hands.

In the photo with the boy holding his hand, his hand leads you straight to the subject’s eyes. This is a great example of how the technique helps to lead the viewer’s eyes to the subject.

The photo of the boy looking through the bars at a playground helps to illustrate utilizing whatever is in the environment to create visual complexity. The pattern of the red bars leads the viewers eye right to the boy’s face.

Our image of the little girl smelling the flower uses a plant in a backyard to create multiple layers for the viewers. Because of the use of shallow depth of field, that also creates more visual layers that leads to the in focus area where our main subject is. Enjoy!

Here’s a portrait photography tip, get closer!

Getting closer is something that most photographers can do to better their images. Usually, most photographers want to include all of their subject in the frame.

Unfortunately, this keeps us from getting close-up and personal. It’s okay to crop off the top of your subject’s head. We all know it is there, so all lot of the time we don’t need to show it!

One more of our portrait photography tips, shoot your subject through something for visual complexity. It makes your photos a lot more interesting and it gives the viewer something to look at.

In the photo above, there were some beautiful wysteria plants that were blooming and I wanted to somehow include them in the frame. I asked my subject to stand behind them and voila, an interesting portrait is born.

Here’s the photographic composition thinking as I made the pic.

I placed her eyes near the top right area of convergence so the eyes of the viewer would be drawn to them and the blooms of the flowers are in different areas of focus to create visual complexity. Enjoy!

Digital photography tip on lighting and our angle or point of view.

This entry talks about light and how often we don’t really recognize it and how our angle or point of view makes all the difference.

In the first image we have a typical crib in a nursery. There’s a window that is on the left side with non-direct light coming into the room.

In the second photo we have our baby. Most people are happy with this type of an image. We can see the baby in the photo and that is about all. The angle is from a normal adults view, high above and looking down on the baby.

But in our last image, we have an image that will last.

Why?

Because it combines composition (I’ve placed the baby’s face in the upper area of convergence), great lighting (the window provides  soft even lighting) and a nice moment as the baby smiles.

My angle or point of view helps to draw the viewer into the image by shooting through the slats of the crib to bring some visual complexity into the photo, too.

Instead of a boring image of a baby lying in their crib, we have a memorable photo of a really cute baby seen from their point of view of the world. The slats do give more complexity to the photo, too.

To review:

Window light where the light is not directly shining on the subject is normally very soft and beautiful.

The angle/point of view of our photo is highly important to give a different perspective to your photographs.

Hope you enjoyed another digital photography tip!

Have a great day.