San Antonio Report: How Framing Can Transport the Viewer

FREE REPORT SERIES: On-the-ground from San Antonio, Texas
Have you ever returned from a trip to something really magnificent like the Grand Canyon with a bunch of pictures that don’t do your subject justice?
When you show your friends and family your photos, you find yourself saying “You had to be there!  This picture just doesn’t do it justice.  The views were outstanding.”
This was one of the problems professional photographer Rich Wagner addressed today with our room full of photographers looking for advice on how to take saleable pictures.
“Your job as a photographer,” he said, “is to put your viewer in your photograph.  They should know where your toes are.”
How do you do that?
Framing.
Framing is the art of surrounding your subject (maybe on all sides, or maybe not) with something else.  Usually something in the foreground.
So when you’re taking pictures of the canyon, for instance, framing the canyon might include finding a tree next to you and shooting the canyon with the tree as a reference for size.  Or, if you’re shooting a big landscape, you could include some of the ground where you’re standing to show how expansive it is.
Here are a few picture examples:



The attendees here in San Antonio are not only learning how to take more saleable pictures (easy techniques they can apply to their photos right away), they’re also discovering a dozen or more different markets where they can sell their images when they return home.
We spent most of today talking about travel photography and stock, but tomorrow we’re going to hear from Niels Johansen on real estate photography (an easy cash cow) and Nikki Loehr on newborn photography and senior portraits – two markets really open to people who want to work from home and don’t want the commitment of a full studio and lots of equipment.
Stay tuned as I’ll send you another report from the back of the room tomorrow.
[Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can turn your pictures into cash in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.  Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Selling Photos for Cash: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]