Let us now apply these simple rules to average stiapshotting; it is very well worth while as the resulting improvement in picture making more than compensates for the slight extra care required. There are two ways available to the ordinary amateur to achieve good composition; by selecting the best view-point "from which to. Photograph and/or trimming the finished print with or without enlarging the desired remaining portion. It is usually the combination that makes good pictures, and it is safe to assert that there is hardly 2 photograph that cannot be improved by judicious trimming even if just a tiny piece.
To keep your: picture in the frame watch the exits from your tance balances a large one in the foreground; remove that smi tree' and the whole composition falls to the ground.
Lastly, have a principal point of interest around which your picture is built, subordinating all else to it, The eye should rest comfortably fon that point and take in everything else as subsidiary. Thus subordinate the background to a figure or vice-versa, for you cannot paint two pictures on one 'A Few Common Errors.
Bear in mind these four fundamental principles and plus your own good taste you will avoid the comical efforts one sees 50 sadly often; wherein a tree appears floating in space or seems growing up from the head of a figure in front of it, a boat going full speed out of the picture instead of into it, a bridge cut off from the bank in imminent danger of collapse, and a passing pedestrian minus pedal appendages.... to mention but a few of the more common errors. We are not dealing with the added misfortunes of underexposure and poor technique which usually accompany these snapshots.
In all photography, a good rule never to make an exposure less on something worth while and of interest to you. Indiscriminate snapshotting is not only a waste of money but soon leads to a general loss of interest in the hobby. A few good pictures are worth a hundred bad ones.
Good subjects are rare so it is Poor economy to save on films when they are found. Take several times from slightly different view-points and the chances are one will give you precisely what you wanted. If im doubt, about your exposure " ye more.
Get the clouds into your pictures by using a sky-filter or, better, the filter previously recommended. The sky always has tone, and blank "white paper represents neither sky nor anything else satisfactorily and is the ruin of many an otherwise excellent picture. Values are of supreme importance and good technique is the only key to that.
The Light.
Lighting is very important in fine photography, as in all the graphic arts. A knowledge of chiaroscuro is essential to really good work. The worst light is a powerful midday sun as the con-trests ate too violent and Frequently beyond the power of any printing medium: to reproduce. Snapshotters are told always to yet the sun behind them, but this to put it mildly, nonsense; what matters is to prevent the sun's rays from striking the lens and this is done by either a lens-hood
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.