Subject vs content

At a recent festival, I was laying on the grass listening to a band playing as I noticed the light dancing on the leaves above. As I lined up the camera, I noticed the blue sky, complimenting the cool green of the leaves and lined up the shot to create balance in the colours. The red veins brought contrast to the cooler hues and aided the golden back-lit areas in bringing a warm glow to the image. I created a diagonal line using the main branch to create movement through the shot.

 

This image is of a tree branch which some may consider quite unremarkable; however interest is created by careful use of lines, colours and lighting.

While taking the image of the leaves, I realised that the band playing gave me the perfect second image to this exercise; a badly taken image of a significant event. Without changing any of my camera’s settings, I sat up and took a quick snapshot of the band. The high contrast in this image has lead to several imperfections; an uninteresting view of the crowd, the band appearing almost insignificant as they don’t appear to be the main focus of the shot, and burnt out areas to the left of the image due to overexposure of the white clothing.

 

Of the two images, I definitely prefer the appearance of the leaves and for me, they do tell a story as they conjure up the happy, relaxed feelings of the moment. If I showed my family the pictures however, I think they would get most enjoyment from seeing the image of the band as this would remind them of their experience.

In a perfect world, all photographs would be well taken and interesting; however some events do not leave time to set up the perfect shot so decisions have to be made between subject and content.