Make Your Subject The Star

One of the keys to a good photo is to give the viewer’s eye a little path...an experience through your photo. So instead of the viewer looking at your photo and thinking “huh pretty landscape”, you are aiming for something more like “ooh look at those vibrant flowers...wow what an amazing snow-peaked mountain range...and holy moly look at the color in those sumptuous clouds!”...all in one photo. See the difference? 

Sometimes you look at a photo and aren’t even sure what to look at first. Because the photographer didn’t make that clear. That can happen in busy scenes, like a market, or city street scene. 

So how, as the one holding the camera, do you do that? First, pick a subject. Yeah even if there’s a lot going on, or it’s a pretty landscape. You still need a subject...the focus of the photo. The place to lead your viewer’s eye to.

Next, make the subject obvious. Uh...ok, that sounds hard. Well that’s exactly why we’re here today!

How DO you make the subject that you’ve carefully selected “obvious”? And what the hell does that even mean?

Let’s talk about that.

Making the subject obvious gives direction, focus, and more interest to your photo. OK, I think we’ve agreed on the why. Now let’s talk a bit about the how. There are a few ways to make this happen in your photos.

The first is depth of field. Specifically using shallow depth of field to bring attention to your subject, or a particular element in your scene. Just a little refresh on what depth of field is...that’s how much of your image is sharply focused. A shallow depth of field means that only a tiny portion of your image is sharply focused. Where a deep depth of field means that most or all of the image is in focus.

By choosing a shallow depth of field, that means you focus right on your subject, say my sister shopping at the bouquinistes in Paris. There’s a LOT going on...artwork, other people...but shallow depth of field really puts the focus right on her.

Ahhh…a stroll in Paris. My sister is the clear subject here as she browses through some artwork.

Or if you’re at a market and aren’t quite sure where to focus your photo. Choose one person, one piece of gorgeous produce and make that the star. The other supporting characters will still be in the image, but it gives the photo more direction.

If you want a little more information on depth of field, check out this blog post: Shallow Depth of Field...I Think I’m in Love.

With shallow depth of field, it’s clear that the hand picking up a pepper is my subject; with the other peppers and sign being slightly blurred.

The next tip on bringing focus to your subject is lighting. Which sometimes you can control and sometimes you can’t. Great. So I’m telling you about something that you potentially have no control over? Yep. That’s right. I’m just mean that way.

Our eyes tend to pay attention to a) what’s in focus, and b) what’s the brightest. It’s just how our brains work. So if you follow the first tip and have just the subject in focus, then the second factor is to have the subject well lit.

The light here clearly lit my subject which was this castle in Annecy, France.

When you’re traveling I get that can be tough. You can reposition yourself to help the subject bask in more glow. But other than that? 

Well, since you mention it...there is a sneaky way to get this accomplished. Editing your photo afterward. If you do all the contortions possible to position yourself in relation to the subject with the best available light, but STILL don’t get the effect you're looking for...editing can be your new best friend.

When you edit, of course you adjust brightness, shadows, contrast… BUT you can also adjust locally on JUST your subject. Not brighten the whole photo, just brighten your subject. Now you have to be a little careful when doing this so it doesn’t end up looking like a bright glowing ball effect. But with a little practice….voila! Your subject is lit and the star of your composition!

The door is my subject here…but with this photo straight out of camera, that isn’t really clear.

Now you can see that the door is my lovely subject (I wonder what’s behind it??!!) with the steps leading right to it.

All right, we’ve covered focus and light. Now let’s talk about positioning the subject within the frame. How exactly you do this is pretty subjective. I mean are you more likely to look first at the subject if it’s in the front of your frame? Sometimes. 

Right. So that’s not super helpful. Let me give you an example. In this photo, the subject is the bicycle leaning against the fence - the one on the left, the whole bicycle. When I composed this photo, I placed the bicycle in the lower left of the frame. But often I’ll try several different compositions just to see which works the best.

So try the front left, front right, even move a bit and get the subject in the top of the frame. A lot of this is trial and error. So my suggestion is to commit to a particular section of the frame for your subject when looking through your viewfinder and create the photo. Then maybe try your subject in another area and create that photo (of course depending on how much time you have and how antsy your travel companions are).

Let’s go back to the ‘my sister in Paris’ photo. In this one, based on all that was going on around her, I positioned her in the front  and got close to her so that she was positioned very prominently in the frame. So part of the strategy is position in the frame, and part of it is what else is going on around the subject. What other elements there are to contend with.

So let’s talk about those other elements now. That is my 4th and final tip. Make sure that there aren’t distractions competing with your subject. This one takes a little practice...and patience.

When there’s a LOT going on in a scene, you’re trying to focus on part of it. Let’s take the example of a wine tasting in Bordeaux (one of my absolute favorite cities in France, by the way). I could have made photos of the woman pouring the wine, the wine, the glasses, the other tasters, the room, the barrels...you get the picture. But I decided to create a photo of the action of Mademoiselle grasping the wine glasses as she picked them up. See your subject doesn’t have to be just one thing. In this case it’s her hands picking up the wine glasses. It’s more of a moment than just a ‘thing’.

Her hands picking up the wine glasses is my subject in this photo. Hmmmm…that makes me want a glass of wine.

But by paying attention to what else was going on and eliminating it all from the photo, that made the subject super obvious. On top of that, I used shallow depth of field so that her hands and the wine glasses being picked up are the first thing you, as the viewer, look at. Sure eventually you get to the other glasses, the bottle in the background, the perimeter of the frame. But first? The subject. And that’s just the way I intended it.

THAT is the key word right there “intended”. A little intention beforehand will give you much better results in the end.

Now I kind of skimmed over the editing section for increasing brightness specifically on your subject. If you want more information on this then I recommend my Introduction to Editing in Lightroom course. You’ll learn about all the global edits like brightness and contrast plus the regional and local adjustments; including demonstrations on specific photos to improve that viewer experience.