The surroundings matter more than the subject, or do they?

Sunday 1 January 2023, 13:31 by Nando Harmsen | 3,557 views | 2 comments

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

Taking a photo of a beautiful place is easy. You stand somewhere with a good view and take the photo. But making a beautiful place look beautiful in a photo is something else. The subject is obvious, but what about the surroundings?

Staverden estate on the Veluwe is always photogenic. The manor house offers many possibilities for photographing it in an interesting way. There is no single best way to do this. How you bring it into the frame depends on your choice of surroundings.

The subject is clear. The manor house is the subject. You want to photograph it, you want to show it. There is really nothing difficult about that. It becomes more difficult to decide how much of the surroundings you want to include in the frame.

This is where a number of choices come into play. Should the manor house be prominent in the frame, or do you want the surroundings to play a part? In the first case, you will quickly choose to fill the frame with the manor house.

The manor house is the subject, the rest is secondary. But that rest is still very important, because you do not want any distracting elements.
In this case, I chose a symmetrical composition, partly because of the reflection in the water. Even so, I think there is too much space on the left and right, making the manor house look too cramped in the frame at the top and bottom.

However, it is also important to pay close attention to the surroundings. So do not look too much at the manor house, but look at the things you can see around it. Even if they make up only a small part of the photo.

You can see that there is an electricity box on the left of the frame. I can now crop to a 5:4 ratio, both correcting the tightness at the top and bottom and keeping the box out of the frame.

The 5:4 crop gives a better balance in this symmetrical composition. And there are fewer distracting elements in the frame.
You can do it differently too. By creating more space around the manor house, the whole scene gets a much more spacious feel. I also chose an asymmetrical composition with a beautiful diagonal along the left bank.

A more spacious composition with a beautiful diagonal. It shows the manor house more in its surroundings. I was able to keep the reflection, because it is a nice one.
The disadvantage is the electricity box, which is still in the frame. I could consider removing this small thing with Photoshop. This composition has allowed me to retain the reflection in the pond, which is rather nice.

There is another nice possibility, which I only noticed after looking around carefully. The pond flows into a stream. You only see this when you look around properly. I went and stood on the other side of the stream, where the day trippers also take their photos.

A photo of the park with the manor house, rather than a photo of the manor house. There is a beautiful diagonal or curve leading towards the manor house.
I deliberately looked for a composition in which the diagonal or curve of the water leads to the pond and the manor house. This creates a beautiful leading line into the image. Because the manor house now appears much smaller in the frame, it has become a photo of the estate itself.

A nice bonus is that the rhododendron on the left comes into the frame. This immediately hides the electricity box. I no longer have the full reflection in the frame, but that does not matter. The manor house is now an element that blends into the park. It no longer needs to be prominent.

This shows how the look of a photo is largely determined by the way you bring a subject into the frame. Do not just look at the subject, but also pay close attention to the surroundings. They are just as important, or perhaps even more important.

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