I originally took this photo during the Arizona trip. When I got to look at it on the bigger screen of my computer there were just too many elements and distractions in the composition. Even though I loved all the dramatic shadows and the interesting foreground I ultimately ended up hitting the “reject” button and moving on. Lately I’ve been spending time looking at the photos I haven’t kept and critiquing what was wrong with them. After playing with the crop tool I’m much happier with this composition with just the barrel cactus as the prominent subject in the foreground and the dramatic backdrop of the mountains and the valley. Sometimes composition is about subtraction rather than how much you can fit in the frame.
Camera settings: f11 | 1/125 sec | 28mm | ISO 100
“Remove. Subtract rather than add. Always, always look to be thinking about what you can take out of a photo, not what you can add in.”