ABSTRACT
As an amateur photographer, I have learned that “framing” a shot affects how I see what I see. I am friends with a few professional photographers on Instagram . I have learned from them how an average picture can be made extraordinary, simply by changing the perspective on a particular point of interest. For example, on a mountain trail near my home, there is a tree that hikers decorate for Christmas. I have taken numerous pictures of this tree, but they all have seemed average. Somehow I couldn’t capture on a screen what I experienced in real life. Then, two days ago, I saw a friend’s post of a decorated tree alongside a trail. He chose to focus on one red ribbon, leaving an expansive panorama in the background. His picture captured what I had been feeling during my multiple attempts to portray the essence of our own trail tree. Learning to frame a shot, noticing subtle variances in the light, and balancing the picture’s composition with objects foreground and background and on the horizontal plane, can make all the difference in what one sees.
