I think a photography class should be a requirement in all educational programs because it makes you see the world rather than just look at it.
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A personal pet peeve of mine are travel photos, the kind where you ask someone to take a photo of yourself in a cool environment.
In almost every case — unless you accidentally ask a real photographer — the person puts you in the center of the image. Kinda like this:
or (even worse) this:
Usually I want to scream when seeing these photos. Because the photo should not be a portrait. There are better places and ways to do a portrait, heck, even an environmental portrait. And even then you would likely not put the person dead center.
Instead, it should show both the person and the environment. Or to put it differently — show you in a cool place.
Few laypeople manage to achieve this. The first photo can somewhat be saved by cropping it:
Now it places the person as part of the environment (me at a shrine gate on top of Mt. Fuji), not dead center (focusing only on me, not where I am). It also adheres somewhat to the rule of thirds now. However, part of the shrine gate is missing, something that cannot be corrected in post-processing (yet).
The second photo is beyond hope. There is virtually nothing visible of the great city in the background, because the «photographer» was focused solely on the person. She completely ignored the background, including the people obscuring the view.
A much better example is the following photo, showing both the person (me) and the cool background (Petra).
I am not sure whey so few people manage to do photos like the one above (which is not perfect but leagues better than the first two). Perhaps they only think about the person who should be in the photo, not considering that the photo is worthless if the context is missing. Perhaps they think that putting the person dead center is the only or best way to keep the person in focus, ignoring that they can set the focus point even on smartphones. And with cameras that have face/eye detection, it’s pretty much automatic.
I wonder whether I should create a small card that I can hand out when I ask someone to do a photo. Might work to get better photos. Just some tips such as «Please take the photo so I am at the side of the photo, showing both me and the cool place we are.» or «The camera is set regarding aperture (small enough so both me and the background are sharp) and eye detection is activated.»
But perhaps I should just start carrying a small tripod and do selfies 😉