What path to follow to self-learn photography

[Darthcolo]

Ok… I will not take blame for anyone’s catarsis here (but I would love to charge some bucks for that ).

I think that photography, as a form of art, it left room to everyone's own interpretation. I could take a picture thinking or feeling in a certain way, but the viewer will bring his own bagaje and interpret it his own way. As long as a picture is worth of interpretations, it’s ok for me.

And it's ok that you critique my work, because for me it's another way of learning.

Coming back to the main thread, I went out this weekend and took some pictures. The main thing I practiced is the aperture. I used a 35mm and a 18-55mm lenses.

I took lots of pictures, but these three are the one that I like the most (I updated my Flickr portfolio):

Regarding the editing, I'm trying to find the right arrange of settings that make the photo mimic what I saw in real life. So there is no consistency in the processes that I apply, because each photo has it's own moment.

Any thoughts, advices and critiques on these pictures?

 

[soufiej]

IMO the third shot is your best in this group. In all of the photos I like that you are getting a shooting position not usually taken by a beginner. In #1 and #2 you have some distractions in the image, wires and poles that do not serve the picture. With digital processing you can take those pieces out but, IMO, that's a lot of work when you could have seen those things prior to taking the shot and looked for a better position or a different angle from which to shoot. I think #1 would be better served by a different aperture setting, IMO the depth of field is too shallow. There's more out of focus than in focus. In fact, there's a lot that's out of focus. Is that what you were hoping for? For the type of image you seem to be after, I would not say that's your best option. The plain blue sky is OK but there sure is a lot of it. Composition wise, the fence ends more or less in the middle of the frame and out of focus. Meh! The converging line on the right of the shot does what? For me, it distracts.

Your exposures look better overall than in your previous shots. And, no buildings!

You seem as though you were taken by grass seed heads with this group. #2 doesn't appear to have a good focus on the horizon line and there are wires again. Again, DOF is confusing to me. You have seed heads but, what else? Again lots of plain blue sky and a very bright sun. Some ND filters would have smoothed out the overall image IMO. Mostly though, if you're taken by something like a seed head, take a shot of the seed head or a small group of them rather than making the few items in focus be the whole of your image. Up close and don't distract us with too much other stuff - particularly when you don't yet have the gear to pull off the better shot or the focus is giving a rather large blob of "stuff" beyond the seed heads. Composition wise, this is your weakest of the three.

#2 and #3 have the sun nicely centered in the frame. "Nicely centered" isn't always that nice, particularly when it becomes a repeating pattern in too many shots. Your dynamic range is improved but, still, why am I looking at so much plain blue sky? Coloration overall is something you might have worked on. How did you have your camera set for white balance? Did you set for daylight? Or, shade?

Thread regarding ND filters; Which neutral density filter to choose Photography Forum

 

[Darthcolo]

Thank you soufiej! The location was full of electric lines, and a road with lots of cars. It was difficult for me to leave them out of the pictures. I will take into account the shallowness of the DOF.
The first picture has:

• 35.0 mm
• ƒ/2.8
• 1/640
• ISO 100

Regarding the white balance, since I use the camera I have never changed it from "auto". I think it's a good time to start doing it now!
And well, the composition is something that I have to work out more. It's not easy for me, because everytime that I take pictures, I'm in a hurry... and that is something that will have to change in order to think (feel?) more at the moment of taking the picture.
So, summing up, things for review and exercise:

• DOF according to the composition
• The composition
• The white balance

Again, thank you for the critique.

 

[paigew]

I would argue that the first image is the strongest. I love the fence and leading lines it creates and I love the dof. I also like the second but I feel the sun is too bright and centered. But I do love the dof, perspective, and the sun flare you got. As for the last. It doesn't really do it for me. The horizon is pretty much centered which is somewhat undesirable. Pick one. Sky or ground for your subject. You have a lot of bright uninteresting sky at the top I think it would be stronger had you included more foreground. Maybe try cropping some of the empty sky off.

As for editing. These seem much more 'clean'. White balance is good but I think too cool on the last. To get accurate color on your photos you can set a custom white balance in your camera.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pixmedic]

I think the first photo Is the strongest of the set. The fence Is a nice subject, and it makes a nice line of sight in the image.
The second, I think, was shot too low and with too much foreground to be a good sunset shot.
The third is nice, but i think it's too much foreground. A 16x9 crop to eliminate some foreground and a little bit of sky above the sun might help.

 

[soufiej]

Darthcolo, a setting of f2.8 is going to give you a very shallow depth of field. There are on line DOF calculators available which will provide a rather exact specification for blur and non-blur. Probably several items on the forums also. In #1, by using such a low F stop setting, you have isolated the one post as the sole focal point of the image more or less. That really says to the viewer only that one post is important. If only one single, solitary thing is important in the shot, why did you bother having more in the shot? If you want our focus as viewers to be on one solitary item, that one solitary item had better be rather special and very interesting. One fence post in this case is not IMO.

Items in front of and behind that one post quickly tend toward more and more blur in your existing shot. I would say that's a rather unconventional approach to this sort of shot. Why? Because, as I see it, what you should have been trying for in the shot was the repeating pattern of the fence posts and the line of the fence itself. A line directing the viewer's eye that ends in a quick blur isn't my idea of a successful use of "line" as a compositional tool in your shot. My eye begins to travel along the fence posts only to find you've said, "Don't bother". Once the image begins to blur, you have told the viewer "this" is not that important. According to your settings, the camera was more or less taking a "portrait" shot of that one fence post. That is why you want to blur the background of a portrait or a shot of those individual flowers in your earlier examples. Blur says "don't bother" while sharp focus says "bother". Blur behind the main subject makes the subject "POP" out at the viewer. Did you really want just that one post to POP out at us? It's a nice effect to have some of the foreground objects out of focus but, IMO, not if it means sacrificing the patterns and the compositional movement you should see in the fence line. Do some research on "hyper-focal distance".

I think what I would have attempted with that shot, not knowing the actual conditions you faced, would have been to rotate the camera 90 degrees for a less conventional look to the image. By getting closer to the fence and looking at it with a taller rather than wider framing you probably could have; 1) not included the tower in the shot, 2) not placed a rather obscure line of the road in the shot, 3) looks as though there's another line on the opposite side of the fence which you could have emphasized as another line to direct the viewer's eye to a convergence point in the distance and, 4) found an angle which didn't include so much plain blue sky but rather more strongly emphasized the line of the fence - if most of or the entire fence had been in focus. You were there, I wasn't so take that opinion for what it's worth. As I see the shot right now, you have one fence post in focus and not much else. For me, one fence post doesn't trump a pattern and a line.

If you are depending on your camera's auto settings entirely, it likely focussed on that one post since that was where you aimed the lens and the AF focus setting was probably on a small spot of focus. The camera was trying to do what it calculated as what you wanted. Unfortunately, cameras can't think for themself and often they perform operations based upon what you have told them to do in your menu settings. The idea, of course, is to get away from using "Auto" as your default setting and to begin to venture into controlling the camera more and more to achieve a desired result vs a common result.

What I like about #3 is the placid feeling of calm it demonstrates. I had a friend who at one time lived on land very much like what you show in your shot. Lots of low lying soybean fields stretching out in almost very direction. In the evening we might be sitting on the porch at the back of his house and watching the sunset over the horizon. The air was still, the fields were still, the world was progressing as it should. The clouds in the sky in your shot would indicate to me the same was occurring when you took the photo. Yes, there's a lot of foreground in the image but that's what you get on farm land. At first glance, the cool coloring of the shot lends to the flavor of peaceful simplicity in nature, The longer I look at the shot though, the more the coloration distracts from the image by saying it is not necessarily unrealistic to have the haze of the low sun on a vast field of crops but it is not desirable as a photo. This is where you as the photographer make the decision to obscure reality a bit for the sake of higher drama and more viewer impact in the image. Once again, a filter - this time a polarizer - is something I would have tried on the camera before taking the shot. Or, at least, taken several shots and seen what the effects of filter(s) could bring to the image. You can likely dress up this shot in post production and even crop it a bit to make less sky a feature we don't need to see. However, my opinion is, getting the shot in post production is not the best way to learn and probably not the best way to work as a habit. Get the shot as correct as possible in the camera and then you know you haven't missed something that cannot be redone or undone in the computer.

I'm still going with #3 as my most likable shot of the group. IMO it certainly has the most potential to be made into a better shot than #1 and #2 where so much is simply out of focus and cannot be corrected. I'm afraid I can't say you have a masterpiece yet. But you certainly have some shots which, in six to nine months time, should indicate you are making progress.

Using fully automatic functions on your camera explains the look of so many of your shots. Quite often the camera gets it right but, when the same settings are used too frequently, the shots tend to quickly slide into a sameness that says the operator is not in control. And, really, if you are only going to use "Auto" settings, you didn't need an expensive and sophisticated camera to do so. Right now your shots still say "point and shoot", not what you want from a nice DSLR. Study your owner's manual again and move the dial to "P". Now you are beginning to make the decisions required to get better results. The camera will still make many automatic settings for you (for instance, aperture and shutter speed will be automatically linked as the camera determines the ISO setting) unless you direct the camera to do otherwise. Which is rather easy in the Program mode. You won't stretch yourself too far at this setting but you should begin the learn what the camera sees as technically correct and what you actually want as a result. Maybe try a shot in "Auto" and then try the same shot or two or three in "P" with some changes to the settings. Look at what you think is good vs what the camera determines to be "best". For instance, while the 100 ISO in #1 is fine, you had ample amounts of light to work with. There's no need for the low f stop and the resulting wide open lens unless you are intentionally forcing the camera and the viewer to see only that one fence post as important. You could have shot that same image at a much smaller aperture setting (say, f-11 or f-16), still taken the shot hand held (I assume you don't yet have a tripod/monopod) and had yards and yards of the fence be in focus. That shot, IMO, would have had a very strong line as opposed to the much weaker line of the existing shot.

If that site is convenient to you, go back and, with the camera first in full "Auto" and then on "P" retake the shot several times. Change only the aperture setting at first and observe the results. Then, while you're there, try taking a few shots with the camera rotated 90 degrees and eliminating as many distractions as possible before you click the shutter.

Good luck. Practice as much as possible and freely experiment with your work. Remember, change only one value at any one time and keep track of your work. Don't assume in one shot that you've got the perfect image. You can delete as many shots as you like after the fact. Take a dozen or two dozen shots of the same thing and determine what works and what doesn't after you get home and have some time to contemplate what you've done.

 

[soufiej]

Darthcolo, not to give you too many things to worry over but, are you paying attention to the histogram your camera provides for each shot?

 

[Darthcolo]

Thanks again soufiej.

I haven't thought to keep a wide aperture to allow all the fence to be in focus. In fact, what caught my attention was the grass. I wanted to capture a shallow plane of grass in focus, and put the fence as a frame to that grass. Because of the wind, it was very difficult to catch the grass in focus. Looking back, I should have increased the DOF in order to achieve that in those conditions.

Regarding the shooting mode, I'm using A (aperture priority) and sometimes S (speed prioditiy, most of all at night). Te focus is set to auto, and I'm slowly trying to do it manually, whith more failures than successes.

I must confess that I don't pay much attention to the histogram. I have the vague notion that it helps me to see if certain colors or areas are burned, but not much more of that.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Hey a Spartan!

You seem to be seeing photographs as you're out shooting, keep doing what you're doing (getting out with your camera getting lots of practice). In two months you've barely started.

Think about what you want the viewer to see, what's the picture about? If you wanted us to see the tall grass, think about how you could have framed it in tighter to bring the viewers' attention to that. If you'd wanted us see a larger scene and to follow the fence into the background, a smaller aperture would've made more of the picture in focus (so when your eyes follow the fence into the picture you could see what's there when you get there instead of so much of the picture being out of focus

You might want to sometimes write down what you did (even though the camera stores info.) such as thoughts on what you were going for, or what the conditions were, so later you can go thru and see what worked best.

Except for recent ones you just took your photos look quite processed. That usually makes me think there may be a need to work on becoming more proficient at using the camera to get well framed, properly exposed images; or a lighter touch might be better in processing - post processing can be done as needed to enhance an already good photo but hopefuly won't be a lot of time spent having to fix mistakes.

 

[Nettles]

In the first image I can see an out-of-focus blonde girl in denim shorts tapping that second fence post with her fingers on the way past as she walks away from the camera. Vivid imagination me! If you know a girl like that, go back for a re-shoot.

But I like the first shot best.

 

[soufiej]

Thanks again soufiej.

I haven't thought to keep a wide aperture to allow all the fence to be in focus. In fact, what caught my attention was the grass. I wanted to capture a shallow plane of grass in focus, and put the fence as a frame to that grass. Because of the wind, it was very difficult to catch the grass in focus. Looking back, I should have increased the DOF in order to achieve that in those conditions.

Regarding the shooting mode, I'm using A (aperture priority) and sometimes S (speed prioditiy, most of all at night). Te focus is set to auto, and I'm slowly trying to do it manually, whith more failures than successes.

I must confess that I don't pay much attention to the histogram. I have the vague notion that it helps me to see if certain colors or areas are burned, but not much more of that.

OK, others can chime in and say what they would have done, however, ...
If what you wanted was the grass as the viewer's main focus of interest, then, IMO, you really included waaaaay too much in the shot. From what has been said, I doubt any of us thought you were shooting for the grass to hold our attention. The shot as it stands is very confusing if I'm supposed to be looking at the grass as the main subject.

Your camera was having a difficult time focusing on such a small, moving area of the image and defaulted to the fence post. Getting the camera to focus on another object in the same plane as the grass seed heads and then readjusting the composition would have helped here. Your camera's owner's manual should give you the how's of doing such recomposition work. Getting in closer or using a zoom would have helped either situation by cropping out the unwanted parts before you clicked the shutter.

IMO, if the grass is your intended subject, the sky is not all that important. And, if you include it, you should get that (blurred) horizon line up to about the upper third of the frame. A still lower shooting angle would be the solution there if you want the seed head to be backlit by the sun. The problem you'll run into there is too much dynamic range for your camera (typically it won't really know to meter just on the small seed heads) and you'll really have blown out sky and a mostly silhouetted grass. That's also probably not the shot you thought you wanted.

To stop the movement of the wind blown grass, you would have wanted a faster shutter speed, not a wider lens opening. With full daylight on your subject, you should have been able to increase your shutter speed and still have a smaller aperture. You could have even bumped the ISO up in full sunlight (if needed) which would in turn give you faster shutter speeds and still provide for an acceptable aperture. f2.8 is still a very shallow DOF at your available focal lengths. Most of your shot would still be out of focus save one or two seed heads along a small plane of focus and the camera would still be having a difficult time simultaneously selecting the subject and metering the overall shot. Manual focus would have helped but the shot still would have had other impediments. You're rather shooting above your pay grade with your idea.

If you wanted the grass to be the main focus of the shot, then the fence post should be where the image begins to blur rather distinctly. That's a choice you would have made by taking several shots with various combinations of settings. After looking at what you had, you could have decided to have the fence line be an element of the photo or not. I probably would have gone with "not" and would have tried to blur the fence to simply give a soft framed edge to the line of the composition or totally reframed the composition to not even include a single post. But, if the main subject was to be the grass seed heads, I'd unfortunately say you missed that shot.

Think again about how to take the shot when you are not rushed. Look at what you have and what you don't require for the shot you wanted. Make a few calculations regarding the technical aspects of the shot while you're sitting at home. Maybe give an example of your possible settings and operations for comment. Then try again and maybe even make the fence the subject of another shot. There's potential there, just not in what you have IMO.

 

[Darthcolo]

To stop the movement of the wind blown grass, you would have wanted a faster shutter speed, not a wider lens opening. With full daylight on your subject, you should have been able to increase your shutter speed and still have a smaller aperture. You could have even bumped the ISO up in full sunlight (if needed) which would in turn give you faster shutter speeds and still provide for an acceptable aperture. f2.8 is still a very shallow DOF at your available focal lengths. Most of your shot would still be out of focus save one or two seed heads along a small plane of focus and the camera would still be having a difficult time simultaneously selecting the subject and metering the overall shot. Manual focus would have helped but the shot still would have had other impediments. You're rather shooting above your pay grade with your idea.

Thanks Soufiej. I think I would have to buy you a present or something in exchange of all your help. Do you like wine?

The same goes for everyone else here helping me (and the others that might have the same dobuts)!

It's very difficul just practice one aspect of the camera, when all the primary aspects (DOF, shutter speed, ISO) are so close linked toghether.

In these past days I was walking and trying to see pictures worth taken. Not buildings . I haven't saw anything that catch my attention, so I guess that all the hipotetical photos that I would have taken will not made any impact in the viewer (however, they would help me to practice).

Just the other day it came to me the name of Pedro Luis Roata (pedro luis raota - Buscar con Google He turns out to be a famous Argentinian photographer, and I started to look his work... And every single photo is memorable. I think (as some of you pointed out) that a good photo sticks in your mind. And that is why the composition is so important, and why I have to start learning and practicing a lot on that. IMO.

 

[soufiej]

Thanks Soufiej. I think I would have to buy you a present or something in exchange of all your help. Do you like wine?

The same goes for everyone else here helping me (and the others that might have the same dobuts)!

It's very difficul just practice one aspect of the camera, when all the primary aspects (DOF, shutter speed, ISO) are so close linked toghether.

In these past days I was walking and trying to see pictures worth taken. Not buildings . I haven't saw anything that catch my attention, so I guess that all the hipotetical photos that I would have taken will not made any impact in the viewer (however, they would help me to practice).

Just the other day it came to me the name of Pedro Luis Roata (pedro luis raota - Buscar con Google He turns out to be a famous Argentinian photographer, and I started to look his work... And every single photo is memorable. I think (as some of you pointed out) that a good photo sticks in your mind. And that is why the composition is so important, and why I have to start learning and practicing a lot on that. IMO.

"It's very difficul just practice one aspect of the camera, when all the primary aspects (DOF, shutter speed, ISO) are so close linked toghether."


Difficult at first, yes. Not that difficult to grasp after a bit of practice though. I would say ISO is the most negotiable of the three, certainly with a modern digital camera it is. In the days of film we were more or less locked into a film and its "speed" (or light sensitivity) until we used up that roll. Changing to a faster film as light levels dropped was a PITA.

In a digital system it comes down to the flick of a switch or the automatic selection made by the camera. You should, by reading reviews of your camera, know about where noise becomes an issue as ISO value increases.

(Remember,noise also depends on your use of the image. If you never intend to blow up a shot to more than, say, 8X10, you have a lot of latitude in your ISO settings and can probably shoot at 800 or even higher should you want a slightly larger finished print.)

You should be able to set a maximum ISO for your camera (found in the menus) to ramp up to but not beyond. And you should also be able to have the camera do so quickly or slowly. Slowly is best for a student photographer. I'd say set your max. ISO at 800 and the camera will not exceed that value unless you alter the setting (or you switch to full "Auto" mode). Certainly, for daylight shooting, there shouldn't be many cases where you would require higher than 800 ISO and not even that typically. At this point I wouldn't be overly concerned with ISO since it is an automatic adjustment within the camera made to compensate for aperture and shutter speed changes. (The camera should warn you when ISO must be changed to accomplish a clean shot at your given aperture and/or shutter speed.) If you've set the camera to never exceed that 800 mark, set the working ISO at 100 or 200 and let the camera do the technical work on ISO while you concentrate on the composition and the other two values.

Most day to day photographers tend to shoot primarily in either Av or Tv mode and aren't too concerned about ISO nowdays. The three values are, though, the three legs of a stool and you'll eventually need to know how to see one as changing the other two. That comes mostly from experience and, on a cloudy and cold/rainy day when you can't get out, just sitting with a pencil and paper and working out the numbers until they begin sticking in your head. Many tutorials on the exposure triangle have automatic systems which allow you to practice the settings.

Have you watched or read any tutorials on your 5100? You can put in, say, "Nikon D5100 aperture tutorial" and get lots of useful information. Not only will the information discuss aperture as it relates to general photography, the tutorials should also show you how to specifically operate your camera to get the most from the aperture control.

If you're becoming confused about what one change, say, to aperture achieves, try working in an "Exposure Lock" situation. Now you can set the exposure compensation for a specific exposure level and lock the camera to always create the same exposure as you adjust either aperture or shutter speed (or ISO). As you change one value, the camera will do the calculations at this point and will adjust accordingly to achieve a consistent exposure. This might help you see the changes just one value creates. The camera still depends on the exposure triangle but you can more easily see the effects on DOF, let's say, when you are changing just the aperture setting.

Setting Autoexposure Lock on a Nikon DSLR - For Dummies

I see now what you were referring to earlier was the auto white balance and not just an overall auto mode for taking photographs. Eventually, you should know how to set a custom white balance but that may be beyond what you need to work on right now. Your camera has predetermined values (accessed through the menu) for various lighting types. In general, these adjustments work well and you might just want to familiarize yourself with their effect on the image at this time. Don't clutter up your lesson plan with too many variables. You are still at the "throw away most" stage of learning so don't be overly concerned about turning out perfect shots until you have more time under your belt.

More than likely, the coloration issue in the #3 image is a case of nothing in the image being the equivalent to the ideal 18% grey. Also, depending on how you had set the metering system, your camera may have tried to adjust to an impossible standard. The camera made an automatic selection and simply missed. That's all, just a lesson in light values at this point. This is the type of shot where you might want to bracket your shots. That is, take one shot with a midway setting and the next with "this"setting and the third with "that" setting. The "this" and "that" should be on either side (higher and lower) of your midway value. You can then decide which gave you the closest approximation of what you saw in real life.

Some cameras have automatic bracketing functions for several values and you might want to experiment with these as you are learning the camera's capabilities. Normally, you select a middle value and the camera will take two shots, one each on either side of your assigned value. It's a fairly decent learning tool and we would normally do the same when we were learning to shoot film - and we'd waste a lot of film doing so. But it was a good teaching tool. Bracketing can almost be considered mandatory when shooting sunsets because the values and qualities of the available light changes so fast in just a moment's time that bracketing is one of the only ways to assure a half way decent image of a wide bandwidth dynamic range image. (Which brings up whether your camera has HDR settings. If so, study them and learn when it is appropriate to use them and how to use them. Lots o'stuff, learn each in chunks of experimentation and don't be concerned if you miss a shot at this point. You simply can't expect to remember everything now.) Check the numerous functions for which your camera will automatically perform a bracketing situation. Bracketing is, though, best done with the camera mounted on a tripod. Not completely necessary in most cases (absolutely needed for in-camera HDR) but helpful.

Very nice work by your "found" photographer. Consider, though, the photos probably didn't look like that two months after he first picked up a camera. And it's a fairly safe bet that for each shot saved, there were a dozen or more that got thrown away. It helps to be talented but it really helps to be lucky.

 

[Darthcolo]

Thanks for your time soufiej.
I will take your advices and put them in practice.

Have you watched or read any tutorials on your 5100? You can put in, say, "Nikon D5100 aperture tutorial" and get lots of useful information. Not only will the information discuss aperture as it relates to general photography, the tutorials should also show you how to specifically operate your camera to get the most from the aperture control.

I have seen lots of tutorials now, and that is one of the reasons I started this post: I felt overwhelmed with information. I needed a way to order and arrange the different subjects so it would be more clear to me how to progress in learning.

I see now what you were referring to earlier was the auto white balance and not just an overall auto mode for taking photographs. Eventually, you should know how to set a custom white balance but that may be beyond what you need to work on right now. Your camera has predetermined values (accessed through the menu) for various lighting types.

Last night I practiced some composition at home, and experienced the White Balance presets on my camera. I set it on tungsten and the orange went away. It's nice to see nice colors without the necessity of editing the photo in the PC.I know this might be a very basic thing, but I haven't taken into account until now...

This is the type of shot where you might want to bracket your shots.

I have used some bracketing when I experimented with the HDR technique. But it never occurred to me that, in fact, it can be used to test different expositions of a desired photo.

Well, only in this post I have learned a lot... As deep I get in this world of photography, it gets deeper and deeper; and more exciting!

 

[pgriz]

From your Flickr portfolio, it seems you have an eye. Keeping in mind that your eye/mind and the camera don't work in the same way, part of the challenge is to bring the camera's view to match what you see in your mind's eye. Since our minds are excellent at screening out stuff we're not interested in, but the camera sees EVERYTHING, we need to use photographic tools (depth of field, distance compression or expansion, camera blur, focus placement, etc.) to bring the image closer to what our mind perceives.

Two methods work for me when trying to bring the two closer together: Simplify and Explore.

"Simplify" means to study the potential image and decide what aspect you're attracted to, then to find an appropriate angle/perspective, to make it clear to a potential viewer what it was that you saw.

"Explore" means to take multiple shots of the subject, varying the exposure setting, the focal length used, the angle and perspective, the focus placement and the framing, so that you have a set of images that you can look at later and decide which combination works best. After a while, the number of images you will need to take of the subject starts to go down as you become aware of which settings give you which effects.

There is another aspect that works for me, and that is to think of the image as a short story, with a beginning, a middle and and ending. The "beginning" is usually the brightest or sharpest part of the image and our eye usually "enters" the image focused on those elements. From there, the eye starts to explore the rest of the image. If you supply a visual path for the eye to follow (say, a set of lines or curves), the eye usually uses these to move around the image. The "end" or finish is often the starting point.

When photographing people, keep in mind that our human brains fixate on faces first, especially the eyes, which is why we're told time and again to get the eyes sharp. After making "eye contact", we go elsewhere. If there are bright or sharp areas in the image, we will shift our gaze to them. Whether that is a distraction or support will depend on how they are arranged and whether the secondary elements reinforce or take away from the primary subject. This is again why portraits usually use a thin DOF to blur out the unimportant stuff.