I am often a little late to the “party”, let’s just get that out of the way first thing. It took me a little longer than most to learn composition techniques. Good composition often involves what you leave out of the frame as much as what you put in. When we start out in photography, we run around pointing and snapping like crazy and of course, they are all masterpieces, right? Back in the beginning, I would expect to bring home a basket ful of “good” shots or I was not happy about it. I heard about Ansel Adams’ comments where he said “a crop of 12 good images a year being a good crop” and I thought, “really?”.

The light bulb finally came on and I began to see what Ansel was saying. I looked back at all my old work and realized that the vast majority of it was documentary photography at best, snapshots. This is all very normal and part of learning. I also used to adhere to a few “standard” aspect ratios too…..to make it easier to print or frame. Of course not a whole lot of them got framed either so that really didn’t make sense either. Finally, I came to the realization that by far the most common place for anyone to consume photos was on social media and currently, mostly on a small phone screen. I began to see that by allowing myself some creativity in something as simple as cropping an image, I could change it immensely. There are people out there who simply will not crop a photo, not even for straightening a crooked horizon! I think those people are missing out on a valuable tool.

This image is called Sawtooth Range and was made in Alaska. I love the beautifully atmospheric nature of the shot and the 2:1 panoramic aspect ratio works great from my point of view.