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Head in a box – PLEASE STOP!
This week is going to have a few rants and personal pet peeves of mine.
We are trying to raise the bar on photography again, so let’s all try to improve ourselves.
One of my biggest pet peeves is since the advent of autofocus and digital, no one seems to understand composition. It’s like people think that those autofocus points are meant to take care of that too. You just point the camera and if it is in focus you click……WRONG! You need to recompose.
The I like lots of space above the head shot
Notice the two shots above. I can’t tell you how many times I see the one on the left and people thinking that it’s ok. Guess what? It’s not, it is horrible!!!!! This is the old center focus trick. You stick that center focus spot on the subject, focus and then click.
Just use your focus lock and then recompose for a really nice photograph. It really is that simple, just like the shot above on the left.
The head in the box horizontal shot
People are vertical unless they are laying down, so why in the world would you want to take a horizontal of them standing up. The shot on the left is the correct way of shooting a person, in my humble opinion. They are vertical and so is my shot. The problem is that I see the top horizontal more than anything lately. It’s the old head in the box shot. Once again, you center focus and don’t realize that you can turn the camera vertical. Even if you for some reason can’t turn your hand to make the camera vertical, you can still use the focus lock and recompose to make an actual composition. Look at the shot on the bottom right. Just by moving the subject to one of the thirds the shot is no longer a head in the box.
You decide
Which one of these shots looks more aesthetically pleasing? The “I love lots of head space”. the “head in the box”, or the properly composed vertical.
Please for the love of composition, start using your focus lock and recomposing!!!!
Kevin
I couldn’t agree more.
Hey Kevin,
Great tip as always. What’s your opinion on using the AF points? I read an article that using the center to focus and recompose was bad and that it tended to produce blurry shots (sometimes). They recommended to use the outer points to be ‘closer’ to your composed shot. But then again, I’ve also read that those outer points aren’t as accurate.
I prefer to use the af point that is closest to the eye.
The funny thing is that you can still manual focus!
Kevin