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Size Does Matter -
Creating a Visual Reference
By Tedric GarrisonLet's take a waterfall, tall and beautiful. Now visualize a small stream trickling over the edge of a few small stones. If you shoot it just right, they could almost look the same. Wait a minute you're saying, those two are as different as night and day. That's a good point, but unless you also include something to compare the water to, you have no point of reference.
There are times when photographs need something else in the image to truly appreciate what's there. For example: You hike your way into Zion National Park, and see this grand waterfall. You get close to capture all the detail, and shoot against a clear beautiful sky (so the background won’t distract.) You tell all your friends about the great adventure, and eagerly await your pictures from the photo lab. When they finally come back, you flip through the shots looking for your master piece. When you finally see it, your heart sinks. It looks OK, but there is no magic, no majesty. It’s just not the same.
What happened? When you saw it live, you were there. You climbed over rocks; you walked through streams, and pushed pine branches out of your way. When you looked through the view finder of your camera, these images were also in the back of your mind. The human mind is a wonderful creation; it takes images, sounds, and smells and blends them all into wonderful memories. The problem lies in the limitations of the medium. In other words, we experience in three-dimensions, we document in two-dimensions.
Remember that size is relative. Even a small mountain may seem big compared to a boulder. A boulder is big compared to a rock. A rock is big compared to a grain of sand. But even a grain of sand could appear huge if there was nothing else in the image to compare it to.
Most of us at one time or another has seen an extreme close-up of something that made us think it was something else. Why did we not recognize the item for what it was? Simply put, you had nothing to compare it to. You had no point of reference. This works in both directions, small and large. I'm a big fan of simplifying an image when you can, but there are times when you can simplify too much. Leaving a rock or a branch in the edge of the picture can often mean the difference between a nice shot and a great shot! If you want the person viewing the image to know it was huge, then you need to give them something to visually compare it to.
When you shoot your subject with things going from big to little, or even from little to big, it creates the illusion of depth. The deeper your image appears, the more three-dimensional it appears. The more three-dimensional you image appears the more likely your viewer is to experience at least part of what you did when you took the shot. After all, isn’t that why you take photos to begin with? I take photos not to remind me of what happened, but to share with others who were not there. Maybe I’m strange, but I believe in order for someone to get the big picture, they need to see the small details, (like having something in the picture to visually compare everything else to.)
This Article Written By: Tedric A. Garrison Cedar City, Utah
Tedric Garrison has done photography for over 30 years. In college he was an Art Major, and firmly believes that “Creativity can be taught.” Today; as a writer and photographer he shares his wealth of knowledge with the world, at: http://www.betterphototips.com
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