Canon 1DsMKIII, 24-70 mmL, f/16, 1/4th second shutter, 100 ISO, Singh-Ray circular polarizer.

Simplifying a scene in nature is sometimes harder than you would think – though I know most of you have experienced this. One of the tricks I use when my scene seems too cluttered is to try and visualize every element before me as either a line or geometrical shape. I try to find a common thread between elements; a connection of some sort that will lead the eye through the scene. I call this flow. Does my composition allow for my viewer’s eye to flow through the frame?

Today’s image is a good case in point. I found this scene behind my hotel just north of the casino lights at South Lake Tahoe. Our workshop group had been snowed-out of our sunset shoot (the first of three storms in four days to hit the area). By 7 pm we threw in the towel and headed our separate ways for dinner. Once finished, I came back to the hotel room, looked out my back window and noticed that the relentless snow had momentarily stopped – a quick glance at my watch revealed that we were right on posted sunset time. I told my friends Mike Hall and Scott Schilling that I was going to wander out and see how it looked as the property backed right onto a public beach. In a matter of minutes we were treated to this scene of the pier with one caveat – someone had put their footprints through the fresh snow.

While bemoaning our bad luck, I started to notice the light brightening allowing for the clouds in the background to look extremely dark. This nice glow appeared on the Lake’s surface and I quickly dropped to my knees and photographed this frame. Besides the light, what really drew me was the simplicity of the lines created by the edges of the pier that led my eye up and through the frame – flow! I decided to relegate the dark clouds to just the top 1/6th of my frame and liked how the horizon line served as a stopping point for the eye so as not to allow it to leave my frame.

We as photographers have an incredible opportunity to limit where our viewer’s eye will go by proper framing. Thanks to an illusion called the Ponzo affect, the pier (like a set of railroad tracks) appears to get smaller as it trails off in the distance. This is something our eye/brain is used to seeing even though intellectually we understand that the end of the pier is the same relative size as the foreground. My low perspective also exaggerates this phenomenon. So, did I arrive at this composition with my first try? No. In fact, I started more wide angle and then kept refining (tightening) the composition in subsequent frames. In essence, I was trimming anything that did not belong or add to the scene – simplifying – creating flow.

So what happened to those footprints I spoke of earlier? Well, in the final analysis they were more of a distraction than an aid so I cloned them out with the help of the patch tool. In essence, they disrupted the flow so they had to go! Did I alter reality? For this moment yes, but had I arrived 10 minutes earlier, perhaps they would not have been there. This is fine art not journalism. I simply restored the pristine look to the scene that I intuitively knew existed. Had I moved or cut-off a section of the pier, then I would have over-stepped my boundaries. It’s really one of those issues that every serious landscape photographer will have to deal with sooner or later. My position is I won’t move elements, but I will remove something that at one point was never there (trash, twigs, or in this case – footprints). Yeah, I know you could make the argument that at one point this pier never existed, but hopefully you get my point.

The bottom line is that by using the lines and shape of the pier, I created flow for my viewer’s eye. Think about this the next time your scene looks a bit chaotic. Tighten, move, change your perspective and play with the shapes and lines in front of you. See if you can create some flow in your images.