My Frame

I am not a photographer by any means. I'm talking, not even selfies. My Facebook picture hasn't changed in over a year. It's bad. I grew up in a family where we didn't take pictures unless there was a person in it. Otherwise, it was useless. I needed this assignment for a number of reasons, but I think one of the most important things I learned was to stop taking pictures with a person's face smack-dab in the middle. This image still isn't the most interesting thing I've ever seen, but it is much more interesting than the one I took where the child's face is static and in the center. It works because the face of the statue, the focal point, is at an intersection of the rule of thirds grid. 

Although it is not apparent here, I took about a thousand different pictures of a hundred different things trying to find a picture that would fulfill this assignment. Along the way I learned that another huge problem the pictures I take is that I cut off the movement with my choice of angle. I usually go against the movement, so by the time one's eye gets to the edge of the frame, it ends. It dies. It seems there is nothing outside of the frame. So, now I know to use the rule of thirds rather than always putting faces in the center of the frame, and to use the gestalt principle of continuity to allow the picture to continue even where the frame ends.