How do you recognise a subject in a photo?

Friday 18 March 2022, 20:02 by Nando Harmsen | 4,385 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Sometimes you look at a photo you have taken and you do not know why it is not appealing. Is it the light, is the photo too busy, or is there something else that means the photo has no wow factor? You could ask Lightroom or Photoshop.

There is one thing a photo almost always needs. That is a subject. Without a subject, there is basically nothing to look at. Barring exceptions, of course. After all, nothing is absolute.

Is a photo not quite what you expected? Then it may be that the subject is not clear. Perhaps there is no subject at all, or it is too hidden in the frame. It can be difficult to see this because, as a photographer, you know very well what you photographed.

A panorama of a rhododendron. The subject is clear to me, but does that come across?
Compared to you, a photo can come across very differently to a viewer. They do not know what you want to show and can therefore judge better what is wrong, and why the photo lacks appeal. With the selection tools in Lightroom and Photoshop, you can ask these programmes whether there is a good subject present.

The new selection masks in Lightroom and Photoshop also offer the option to automatically select a subject. Click that option and the smart software will examine the photo and then select the subject. And that smart software can do this surprisingly well.

Lightroom easily finds the subject. It is also very clearly present.
But sometimes it goes wrong. The software cannot find a subject. That is exactly where the trick lies. If Lightroom or Photoshop cannot find a subject, or the software finds a whole range of subjects, this is probably due to... the lack of a clear subject.

In this night photo, Lightroom cannot find a subject. In the end, a few lit windows in the reflection in the water were selected, but that is more or less random. So the photo offers little to look at.
Selecting a subject in Lightroom or Photoshop is of course a tool, and it is far from foolproof. There are many factors that make a subject stand out, and the software does not recognise all of them.

Although it is called AI, artificial intelligence, the software is far from truly intelligent.

It can, however, be seen as a way to help you see through the photo. Ask Lightroom or Photoshop to select a subject and see what happens. Is there a clear subject, and does the programme isolate it from the rest of the photo? Then you are already doing well in that respect.

In this landscape, Lightroom found the chunks of ice. This is a clear subject. It gives the photo something to look at.
If Lightroom or Photoshop finds too many subjects, or the programme gets it completely wrong, you can ask yourself whether that is what is wrong with the photo. Perhaps that is why the photo does not look so appealing. The photo of the rhododendron is a good example.

When we look at the photo of the rhododendron, Lightroom sees an entire area as the subject. In other words, there is too much in the photo without anything clearly catching the eye. This composition could therefore be improved.
Once again, it is not an absolute truth, but it can be a useful way to look at your photo critically. Give it a try, and who knows, it may help you really see through your photos, without the idea behind the photo that you have as a photographer, or had.

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