Creating great photographs is difficult, we all know this. But there are key components to great photography that, if focused on, can help get you much closer, more frequently.
For me, there are lots of ways a great photograph is great. There are of course the usual suspects; composition, lighting, and so on. But I gravitate towards one other metric which is harder to define: how memorable it is. There are technically poor photographs that stick in your mind and there are technically brilliant photographs that are forgotten as quickly as they're seen, but for me, images that resonate with the viewers ought to be the primary aim.
In this video, James Popsys talks about how he aims to create good photographs consistently. Though he isn't explicitly talking about how memorable a photograph is, that is also what he's pointing towards. His key takeaway — which I don't want to get into as he does a brilliant job of explaining it — is looking to create tension in your images. Tension can be achieved in a number of ways, as he sorts through, but for me, the value in tension is that it increases the likelihood that I will remember the image. As part of my job and as part of my passion, I look at hundreds and hundreds of images per week — often more — but very few stick with me. Occasionally it will be because the shot is somewhere special, or the light was incredible, but some sort of dissonance in the frame has the highest success rate.
Do you look to create tension in your compositions?
