Dominance, Part II

After my first post about Dominance (which I actually published before it was finished - instead of saving as draft - d'oh! Perhaps you want to read it again, I updated it later...), here's a nice way to find out which your personal visual preference is. The initial idea comes from Bryan Peterson, I read about it in his book "Learning To See Creatively".

Basically, its about picking a set of something like 80 photos and identifying the dominant element (color, shapes, patterns, etc. etc. as described in my first post about the topic). You're then supposed to make a list to find out which element attracts you the most, and identifying your personal weakness(es) that way just as well - and then go out and work on that weaknesses, of course! :-)

The easy part is transferring this into the digital domain with Lightroom: create a new "parent" keyword "dominance" and then add sub-keywords (the easiest way to do this is directly in the keyword editor: just add a keyword like "lines > dominance" and you're done). Then you can browse the keyword list and immediately see how often you used which keyword -OR- you can create a new auto collection and have it pick the photos by exactly those keywords.

The difficult part is identifying the dominant element(s) in your photos. The visual center of interest in the following photo is the peak of the Beutelkopf on the right, OK... but what is the dominant element of the composition? For me, its "lines", and the jagged lines of the ridge that leads towards the peak, and the lines that form the silhouettes of the mountains in the background. But aren't lines just about everywhere?! And aren't lines about everything? Each shape has a border which is a line, hasn't it?



So I wonder: is it really that important to identify the dominant element in a photo? Especially in landscape and nature photography? I think that it requires a lot of abstraction. Is it worth it? I do think so, yes. For me, it is about two things: first, identifying photo opportunities and second, making a photo opportunity really work by concentrating on whats really there on an abstract level.

And the other problem of course is... you got to be disciplined when adding keywords. I do have a problem with that, I admit it! :-) Identifying my own weaknesses in finding dominant picture elements is a good reason to add more and better keywords to my photos.