centeritis

However, I do promise to write more after April. I have been on the road since October in Myanmar, India, Thailand, Ecuador, the Carribean, and currently I’m back in India. I’m in Mumbai at the moment, taking a rest after running a National Geographic Expedition in Rajasthan (if you have never experienced the crazy colorful festival of Holi it is a must!). Next week I’m off to Gujurat to continue working on my project Outer India.

One of the main points I was pounding into a number of people in my fabulous merry Rajasthan group was to avoid “centeritis”. EVERYTHING in the frame has to matter. (And you should know exactly what percentage of the image is actually being shown in the view finder; only a few high end cameras are 100%. Check your manual in the back under Specifications). Yes, everything in an image has to matter, even the space around a portrait. You will rarely see someone in the middle of my frame unless I have a specific reason. However, that doesn’t mean that you have to jam “things” into your image, or smear a face to the edges (unless you want to) … space… can have its place also.

Here a few photos from a workshop I taught in Bangkok, Thailand a couple of months ago in January.

This face begs to be centered in the frame, yet please notice that I only included what is necessary in the frame (I do not crop my images; I challenge myself to create images in the frame).

But most of my images are not centered.

© nevada wier 2009  Thailand

So avoid “Centeritis” … it is a prevalent disease in photography!

Sawasdeekaa, Nevada