Composition and Focal Point (updated)

Some of the simple things I am working on in my pictures, since I have been inspired by my new DSLR, are composition and focal points. I remember Christie and Amber (my amateur-photog-mentors) telling me that I would develop a more refined and pickier eye for this with my new camera, and I inwardly doubted-perhaps-scoffed (sorry, but true). After all, composition and focal point are both things that you can work on with a Point and Shoot camera.  Of course, C&A were ultimately right.  I am much pickier than I used to be, and I can easily foresee that as time marches on, I will be only pickier.

Recently my family went apple picking (more photos to come) and I inadvertently had a very practical, realistic lesson in both composition and focal points. I have always liked to take pictures of signs, so I decided to take a picture of the orchard sign. Point-and-Shoot Rachele woud have swung her camera up, snapped the picture, and that would have been the end of it.

I faced the sign and took this picture:

Of course, my brain had focused on the sign and conveniently filtered out that ugly tarp-tent and the building behind it. Luckily, I reviewed the shot on my camera and was horrified at this outcome. It was such a poor representation of the setting (although the tarp does look a bit like a snow-topped mountain through the cutout). We had spent the last two hours winding our way through gorgeous Columbia Gorge scenery, full of green, yellow, orange, and red colors, and this had not even a brief hint of that.

So, I scampered around in position (it is, by the way, quite overcast and raining at a solid pace during all these photos) to get some foliage in the background, with which to frame the sign. I took this shot:

The power lines are in the frame, but not enough to bother me. Obviously, however, the focus was through the sign cutout and on the trees in the distance. A worthy shot on its own, perhaps with a wider angle, but not what I wanted here.  So, I selected a different focal point on my camera and got this final shot:

Nothing hugely spectacular, but a couple lessons further cemented, and definitely a better result than I would have gotten with my casual nature and and the limited capability of the point-and-shoot.  It's really interesting how your brains filters out backgrounds or fills in cutouts, and then the camera shows you the stark reality of the scene in front of you.  It can take quite a bit of tweaking to present the scene the way you see it in your mind.

Updated:

Amber, who is taking a Photoshop Elements class, sent me a version of my final photo with the power lines removed.  Thanks Amber!