Basic Photography | Composition | Simplicity

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Mother and Son | Paddy Field | Sekinchan Selangor

“As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.”

– Sam Abell ( National Geographic  Photographer ) –

This photograph may look too simple , just a picture of my wife holding my son on his arm, if I tell you that the background is a wall with giant paddy field picture on it, you might believe it because it was too simple, the background is too plain. The truth is this photograph were in fact taken at paddy field in Sekincahn Selangor, among the nearest paddy field that I can reach from Kuala Lumpur.

To make this photograph look plain and simple and in order for me to fills those background with green paddy field without the visibility of the horizon, I’ve to take this picture a little bit higher than eye level, if I took this photograph at my wife eye level, definitely the horizon will clearly be seen and in order for me to eliminate the horizon, I take the photograph a little bit higher from the ground, not too hight, just enough to eliminate the horizon and fills it with the paddy field.

Sometimes our point of view make a lot of different, next time when you go out shooting, try to shoot from different angle, low angle, high angle, and surprise yourself with the result. Since this blog post is about simplicity, try to keeps on changing your point of view, so that your photograph will look simple, avoid unwanted element that does not contribute to the photograph, the main subject of my photograph above is my wife and my son Raphael and I try not to put too many elements in the photograph, so that people will straight away focus on my subject.

This photograph were taken with 50mm lens at Aperture f/4, with shutter speed of 1/640 with ISO 125. The reason why I use Aperture f/4 instead of f/2.8 or the maximum aperture f/1.4 is that I don’t want the paddy to look too “Bokeh” I need just need the paddy to be recognizable and I like the pattern also. This is not the only photograph that I took during my outing with my family here, I took several shot with different angle and perspective, with 50mm and 24mm lens, I choose this photograph for this blog post to illustrate how you can simplify your photograph by changing your point of view.

Photography is a visual language and sometimes the best story is the simplest one where there is not many character that screams for our attention. This is my story with  my family having fun at paddy field.

* If you interested to know how I get the colors for the photograph above, just hit the banner below…