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Have you ever stood in front of a beautiful location and thought… okay, where’s the photo?
That’s exactly what happened to me at Dolly Sods in West Virginia.
Everywhere I turned looked incredible, but I still couldn’t find a decent photo.
So, I started looking for one thing that helped me finally make sense of the scene.
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I think this is where a lot of us get stuck.
We see a beautiful location and assume there has to be an amazing photo there somewhere.
So, we raise our cameras, look through the viewfinder, maybe move around a little bit, try a different focal length…
But we still don’t really know what we’re trying to photograph.
And I think that’s because we’re looking at the location as a whole and expecting the final image to somehow reveal itself.
Sometimes it does. But a lot of times… it doesn’t.
And I think there’s another reason we get stuck.
Sometimes we become attached to the place where we expected the photo to be.
Maybe you researched the location and drove for a couple of hours to get there.
Or maybe you hiked to a specific overlook.
Or planned to be there at a certain time because you thought the light would be perfect.
So, once you finally get there, there’s this assumption that this is where you’re supposed to create the image.
But the location you planned for is really just a starting point.
If the light isn’t working, the foreground isn’t working, or nothing is really grabbing your attention… you don’t have to keep forcing that exact spot.
Sometimes you need to stop looking at the place you planned to photograph… and start looking at everything else around you.
So, what happens when the place you planned to photograph just isn’t giving you the photo you expected?
Well, that was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in when we visited Dolly Sods for the first time.
The sun was setting behind us, it was partly cloudy, and the valley below was covered in shadow. There wasn’t much color, the light was flat, and it just wasn’t working.
Eventually, the sun escaped from behind the clouds and came out for a minute or two. But it just wasn’t what I was hoping for.
And since we didn’t have time to come back for sunrise, we decided to take a walk and see if our luck would change.
We ended up off the trail, just a few feet into a marshy area where the water seemed to have recently dried up.
It had some trees in the background, a little dab of color here and there, and the sun started breaking through the clouds.
But when I created this first image, it just wasn’t working.
It didn’t feel right.
There’s nothing really pulling your eye into the image.
And you lose interest because, well… the image kind of sucks. Am I right?
Most of the foreground is this brown, messy marsh.
The trees are there, but nothing really stands out.
And even the starburst from the sun isn’t very well defined.
So, instead of standing there and continuing to create the same basic image, I started walking around and looking at the scene from a different position.
I ended up moving about 200 feet to my right. And that gave me this image.
Which is 10 times better, am I right?
Now there’s a clear subject, which are the trees in the middle ground. They dominate the frame.
And we also have this bright red foliage in the foreground, followed by another layer of flowers, both breaking up all that brown we had before.
I also positioned the sun behind one of the trees, which gave me a much better starburst.
And there’s more separation between the foreground, middle ground, and background.
Same location as the first image, but now the photo feels completely different.
Here’s the thing… there were really two times I could have just gone home with an average photo.
The first was at the location I had planned to photograph.
That was where I expected the photo to be, but it just wasn’t working.
So, my wife and I walked away and started looking to see what else we could find.
That eventually led us into the marsh, and that’s where it could have happened again.
Because even after finding another scene, the first place I stood still wasn’t giving me an image I was happy with.
So, I kept looking, and eventually those trees in the middle ground started becoming more important to me.
They were the part of the scene that I wanted your eye to notice first.
When I’m working through a composition, I like to think of that as the star of the image.
In other words, what is this photo really about, and what do I want you to notice first?
Once I had that figured out, the scene started making a lot more sense.
But here’s the part I think is easy to miss.
Finding the star doesn’t mean you have to create the image from the first place you happen to be standing.
Once I realized those trees were what I wanted your attention to go to, my position had to change.
From where I started, that big area of brown marsh was competing with them.
So, I moved until the trees became more dominant and the other elements in the scene started helping them instead of fighting for attention.
The star of my image helped determine where I needed to stand.
And from that new position, everything started working together.
So, start by asking yourself what the viewer should notice first.
That becomes your star, or your primary subject.
And it doesn’t always have to be something obvious like a person, bird, building, tree, or river.
The star could be the light falling across part of the landscape, a patch of color, a pattern, texture, atmosphere, or even the relationship between a couple of elements in the scene.
Once you figure out what deserves that attention, ask yourself another question:
Am I standing in the best place to make that happen?
Before you start changing camera settings or reaching for another lens, move around and watch what happens inside the frame.
Move a little to the left or right, get lower, move closer, back up, and pay attention to how the relationships between everything in the scene begin to change.
Maybe something distracting disappears from the edge of the frame.
Two elements that were overlapping begin to separate.
Or the background becomes cleaner.
Maybe moving a few feet reveals some foreground color you couldn’t see before, or gives you better separation between the different layers of the scene.
That’s really what happened with these two images.
Moving 200 feet wasn’t some magic formula.
And that’s where the second half of this idea comes in.
If the trees are the star, then everything else becomes what I call the supporting cast.
The red foliage, the grasses, the background trees, the light, the starburst, and the atmosphere all have a job to do.
They should help the star instead of competing with it.
So, when you’re working a scene, ask yourself:
Is everything else in this frame helping the thing I want you to notice first… or is it fighting for attention?
If something is competing with the star, you have another decision to make.
That’s the shift.
Instead of trying to photograph the entire beautiful location from wherever you happen to be standing, decide what the image is really about first.
Then keep working the scene until your position and everything else in the frame supports that decision.
That’s exactly what happened at Dolly Sods.
The location I planned for wasn’t the photo.
The first place I stood in the marsh wasn’t the photo either.
I had to keep looking until I found what deserved my attention.
Find the star… then find the place that lets it become the star.
But what happens when you work the scene and still can’t find anything that deserves to be the star?
You move around, try different things, look for different possibilities… and it still isn’t coming together.
Read this next, because that leads directly to the #1 mistake I made when I was learning photography.
