Given this week’s challenge by Patti to focus on details, my mind went back to a Toastmaster Photo Club I tried to start and a speech given by a professional photographer in the group. He talked and demonstrated about a different way to focus on details: finding the picture within the picture.

He showed us how to focus on the details of an image to find more images by cropping sections. His example was of a construction site. First he showed us the entire landscape of the site. Then he focused in on a worker, continued with more sections and ended with a pair of shoes. It was an amazing lesson.

Today I’m going to try the same with a landscape taken yesterday at Scotts Flat Reservoir in Nevada City. I was hiking with my daughter-in-law Jess and granddaughter Olivia. Here’s my picture within a picture.

First the landscape.

Next I isolated Jess, Olivia and their dog Hana.

My final capture from this landscape is of a log on the beach.

Although the official Toastmaster group disbanded, a few of us kept meeting until 14 months ago when the pandemic shut us down. We continued to share information, but I will never forget this lesson on details and finding the picture within the picture.

22 thoughts on “Lens Artists Challenge #146: Focusing on the Details”

  4. Anne, that is a REALLY clever idea for teaching how to make the most of a scene. The cropping would train your eye to look for the most interesting perspective, and also to see the various opportunities a scene presents. I loved that idea and promise to steal it for our photo club!

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  12. Thank you for an excellent entry, Anne, and an excellent lesson! And the results of your experiment is again…details matter and are the components of the whole picture – but can also stand alone.

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