The subject for today's lesson is "Simplification". In my opinion, it's the most fundamental "rule" of composition, and good photography in general. There's a reason I didn't choose it for my first lesson, though: in order to simplify successfully, you need some sort of framework to use for the simplification: just focusing on a detail of a scene while forgetting about the rest of the composition usually doesn't work. The Rule of Thirds is one such a framework.

Simplification is about finding the salient thing about the picture about to be taken, taking out distracting details, and putting it into context. Decide what in the picture you want to be the main point of interest, and build the picture around that, removing or suppressing everything that would compete for attention with the point of interest.

[ 1 ] > [ 2 ]