Really Filling the Frame

ou can’t fully experience or feel an intimate, close-up encounter unless the subject is right before you, if not “in your face.” A close-up or macro image will never fully inspire the awe and appreciation you want unless you are close, truly close. Despite the purchase of a macro lens or extension tubes or a close-up filter or a 2X teleconverter, most macro/close-up beginners still come up short. Why? Because they fail to see—really see—that their subject is not touching (or almost touching) the edges of the frame. When your subject finally touches (or almost touches) the edges of the frame, the close-up encounter can finally begin, and from there, if you so choose, it can become even more intimate by you simply moving in even closer, assuming of course you have the necessary equipment to do so.

Gaps, holes, bumps, escapes, and exits are words I often use to describe the compositional problems I see when doing the weekly student assignment critiques at my online school. More often than not, the solution for fixing holes and bumps is simply to get a wee bit closer and/or make a very minor shift in point of view, either up, down, left, or right.

    Note the upper left and lower right corners in the first example of this frame-filling image of artichokes that I took at an outdoor market with my Leica D-Lux 3 in Macro mode. Do you see what I call the bumps that disrupt the otherwise even flow of tone and texture running throughout the rest of the photograph? In the upper left, there’s a tonal shift with the lone light-green artichoke, and in the lower right is seen a bit of the wrapping paper lining the large basket the artichokes are in. It is these two disruptions, these bumps in the road, that take an otherwise smooth, pleasing melody and turn it into something a bit off-key. Again, the simple solution: I just moved in a bit closer, and voilà—the consistent and pleasing melody of this composition of texture, shapes, and pattern rings clear, without any interruptions.