When I was shooting for this week’s post I found myself thinking more about subject than I ordinarily would.

Generally I find myself emphasizing composition above subject. I’ve found that the majority of the work that I am most proud of was created in this way and, as snobbish as it may sound, I feel like a good picture of a bad subject is worth more than a bad picture of a good subject. However, for a bit of a change I decided to tip the scales a little, bend the rules, and consider the subject’s weight with more intent to see where I ended up.

As sort of an easy start, I gravitated toward shooting living things a bit more than normal. Although perhaps my previous posts may tell a different story, I generally find myself trying to stay away from photographing pets. Its often stated by one of my teachers that pet photos are sort of “the easy way out” of a good composition, nevertheless, I still liked the photo of my sister’s cat enough to include it. As far as photos of people, I generally find myself pretty intimidated when trying to adequately form a composition. I find myself thinking more about composing the space than the subject, for example, and that can lead to underwhelming photos. With that in mind, I still found a nice balance with the window/closet photo, even if it was just a candid. Lastly, as beaten to death as the prospect of the shallow-depth-of-field-photo-that-stresses-texture is, I would still say that the tea bottles photo is a success in the realm of the goals I set for this photo set. In conclusion, I wouldn’t necessarily call these photos my best work but its still cool to experiment with different shooting styles from time to time to get a better understanding of how they may work, even if that is just being a little less intimidated to shoot photos of live subjects.