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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Features

Six Ways to Draw The Eye to a Specific Subject in a Photo

Chris Gampat
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05/06/2015
3 Mins read

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You know all about the rule of thirds already, and in general it works. Sometimes, however, rules are meant to be broken. The way to draw someone’s eyes into an image isn’t extremely tough, as it has to do with what people already do when they look at scenes–try to make sense of them. Because of this, there are so many different ways of making someone pay attention to a specific subject in your photos.

Here’s how to draw someone’s eyes onto your specific subject.

Depth of Field

Pro Tip: Don't ever discount taking someone out for a drink or food to talk about your project. It's a tax write off up to a certain amount of money.
Pro Tip: Don’t ever discount taking someone out for a drink or food to talk about your project. It’s a tax write off up to a certain amount of money.

Depth of field does a lot more than making someone realize that the image has lots of beautiful bokeh. In cinema, the depth of field is used to force someone to pay attention to a specific area. You can use it in the same way when it comes to story telling with images. In fact, this is really the only way that you use should it.

Despite the fact that many photographers will tell you that you should shoot things like portraits or food wide open with your lens, they couldn’t be more wrong. If you’re focusing on an eye, that’s sometimes the only detail that we will get in an image if that’s all that’s in focus. When shooting a portrait, a person should be in focus because the point is to focus on the person, not just show off their eyes. Similarly, getting the edge of a bowl of cereal in focus won’t give us any details as to what’s on the inside.

Leading Lines

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Lomography LCA 120 color photos (14 of 24)
Using lines and geometry to make someone focus on a subject is another way to get someone to pay attention to a scene and a specific subject in an image. The way it was used above is by using the triangle created by the scene. It makes your eyes go entirely around the image to see the street scene set up in Union Square and to also take notice of the buildings around the area. Similar things can be done just by looking at straight lines in a scene.

Center

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Zeiss 50mm f2 Loxia review images (11 of 32)ISO 1001-250 sec at f - 2.0

Though the rule of thirds says that you shouldn’t center your subjects in the images you shoot, sometimes it just makes so much sense. Putting a subject dead in the center basically tells someone, “There, that’s it. Nothing else. Look at this thing. It’s what I took a photo of.”

For this to be effective, the background can’t be very distracting. To do this, there needs to be contrast either in the form of depth of field or colors.

Color

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Another way to get someone to pay attention to a specific area in a scene is to use color contrast. This works very well especially with landscapes where subjects are usually bathed in a couple of colors and that’s all. Usually the scenes are dominated by greens, blues, browns etc. In the Autumn, it’s not usual for scenes to be dominated by reds, oranges and yellows–which is part of the reason why people love the season so much.

Making a specific color more saturated or punchy will bring someone’s attention right to it. A great example is a person’s eyes.

Micro Contrast

Model: Asta Peredes
Model: Asta Peredes

Though micro-contrast is something that is naturally added to certain lenses, we’re speaking about it here specifically in regards to the way that lighting can affect a scene or a subject. By adding light to a subject, you can bring out other details in them that you wouldn’t normally see. These are often called specular highlights and they make a subject stand out from the rest of the scene.

This method is best used with the rest of the scene underexposed a bit.

Text

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Great State Classic Skinny strap review images (8 of 8)ISO 1001-100 sec at f - 2.0

The last way to draw someone’s eyes into a scene is by using text. People naturally read text when they see it, and it makes them stare at an image that much longer. Using text can be repetitive and sometimes lazy, so use it in moderation.

Bokeh color depth of field food landscape leading lines lines photo portrait
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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