Notes To My Mother

There are a lot of things that go into making a great photograph. Among these are the light, weather conditions, perspective, proper focus, and of course great foreground, background and subject to name a few. And yet given all of those things the image will fall short if the overall composition isn’t a good one. I think composition is the most challenging and the most rewarding of all of the aspects of photography. More than anything else, composition is where the personality or personal expression of the photographer comes into play. It is through their choice of composition that you begin to discover how they see their world. A good composition can turn an ordinary scene into a photogenic one. I am reminded of the lighthouse in Bandon, Oregon. To me it was a less than ordinary lighthouse, nothing particularly photogenic about it. I had seen it from a restaurant window and had decided it was not worth the trouble to drive over to photograph it  A week later on m...