Step away from your canvas for a few minutes after you’ve been working on it consistently for a few hours. That was one of the first things I learnt in design school. How many of us remember to do everything teachers taught us? Well good for you! This time it blew pass me. Learn from my mistakes and make your photographs better.

A few days ago I posted the portrait shown above of Tattooist Ejay from Eternal Truth Tattoo. I was excited about the shoot, I was excited about the photograph, I was excited about editing and sharing the photograph. I got feedback from members of the Professional Photography Industry Group on Linkedin that shared some of the same information. The feedback made me re-edit Ejay’s portrait so I’m sharing it here with you.

The first comment was from Stephen Caissie. Stephen is now a photographer and was a creative director at ID Design and an art director at theadlibgroup. He said,

“I don’t mind the lighting (I’m a sucker for the high-structure thing myself) but as an art director with a decade of experience I can tell you that the composition here is actually pretty terrible. I’m telling you this in the spirit of constructive feedback, not because I think you’re a bad photographer – your shot of Greg Gayle shows that you do know what you’re doing – but because I really don’t think this is a good shot. The large black object in the extreme foreground, out of focus as it is, wouldn’t be so distracting if it were taking up, say, 1/8th of the total image area, but it’s more like 1/5th. None of the lines are leading the viewer’s eye towards your subject, and he’s half hidden. My advice would be to crop the image up from the bottom to just under the tat on his upper arm, and in from the left to the edge of that vertical piece of metal on the wall. Nothing outside that area is in any way interesting to look at and is just fighting with your main subject. This way you’ll still get a little of that blurry foreground object to help create a sense of depth, but it won’t be nearly as prominent.”

I appreciate helpful comments like Stephen’s. When I got back to my desk, I took a look at the photograph and I agreed with him.

As photographers, we should be looking for that perfect composition in our viewfinders. It’s a must to practice like I do to become a sharper shooter. I will remember to recheck my composition more detailed for my staged shoots. In this case, Ejay was setting up to work on a client so I had to work around his movement.

Stephen’s comment reminded me of a design project I worked on my freshman year at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

It was the first project I learnt about and used psych lines. Psych lines are lines you use in art to lead the eyes to different sections of your artwork. Find these lines or place these lines in your compositions when setting up the set for your photographs.

Above is the out of camera image for the tattooist portrait. I circled parts of the photograph I knew I work on. In camera raw and Photoshop I used different techniques I picked up over my eight years of doing this and placed them together. I strongly advise you to use Google, YouTube, Vimeo and search for tutorials and watch Photoshop User TV episodes. I’m still getting better at what I do, and I will forever be on my journey as a photographer. Somewhere on this journey I learnt that it’s the edit that really counts. Learn your tutorials and take your work seriously. I should have titled this article, A Great Edit Makes A Great Photograph.

The photograph below is the new version of Ejay’s Portrait. I took into consideration the advice from members of the Professional Photography Industry Group.

Numbers one, two and three are to show how psych lines works in the photograph. Number one leads the eye to the tattooist (somewhat). It mainly leads your eye to the blurred object in front that creates depth of field. The depth of field gives dimension to the photograph. Number two and three leads the views eyes to the tattooist’s eyes. Naturally the viewer’s eyes should look for the eyes of the subject. Number four and five illustrates the depth of field. I explained the fifth number earlier about the blurred object in the front. The objects labeled number four, I made solid black hole in them because to me it created more distances. It’s hard for me to explain it the way I would like to. You are probably going to think I’m crazier than I really am in a second. The black holes are like passage ways to space / to emptiness / almost to a galaxy for my mind; it adds more distance into the photograph creating a stronger depth of field. I get a feeling of, what is behind if I went. I could almost feel the cool breeze of another world when looking at it.

Above is the final image (so far) for the tattooist portrait. I could see it being changed again if it were to be used as the front cover of a magazine. It would probably be cropped between the edge of his hat and his left shoulder (the one with the tattoos).

Remember to look for and shoot that perfect composition, utilize psych lines, make a great edit and share a good photo. Good luck.

See you next time!

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