Bringing everything into the frame is almost never necessary

Thursday 8 May 2025, 17:17 by Nando Harmsen | 2,552 views | 0 comments

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

You can capture the world around you in two ways. You can capture everything, as a whole, or focus on one or more elements within it. You do not capture everything, but only what you find interesting to show.

Bringing everything into the frame is easy. You use a sufficiently wide angle and make sure your surroundings fit entirely within the photo's frame. The trees, including their tops. The cows in the meadow, where they still are, or the path alongside the stream.

A photo of the surroundings. A tree beside a stream, a path and posts. Beautiful cloudy sky. The photo is not bad, but it is not really exciting either.
You are essentially taking a snapshot, a reminder of what it was like when you were standing there. Usually, you realise later that the photo is not as interesting as you had hoped. Not even with the rule of thirds or the lines you have followed.

What you have probably done is capture what you saw, without a story or composition that gives the photo tension. It has become a representation of reality that leaves nothing to the imagination.

You do not have to bring everything into the frame. That is almost never necessary. Choose something from the surroundings that appeals to you and place it in a beautiful composition. Choose a spot in the frame, lines leading towards it, and be critical about how much of the background you show.

The same tree photographed in a different way, so that not everything is in the frame. There is room for details and the composition becomes more exciting. Precisely because not everything has been included in the frame.
This makes the photo more exciting and stimulates the imagination. It does not matter if a tree is not fully in the frame. Or if part of the surroundings falls outside the frame. If there is something there that you want to show too, it is better to take a second photo.

A 'cold' record of the world around you does not have to be wrong. Of course not. However, it rarely results in an expressive image. But it does provide you with a nice background image, so you can look back and see where you were standing.

Keep that overview photo just for yourself, as a reminder. And show the world only those beautiful photos that speak to the imagination.

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