It takes a while to learn to use your camera like a photographer for whom the camera feels natural in the hands, to move your fingers across the buttons almost unthinkingly, with intent and purpose. It takes even longer to think like a photographer for whom thoughts about composition and the look and feel of the image come in a way that feels intuitive.

Photographers seem more excited to lean into the former than into the latter, which is unfortunate if you believe that your thoughts as a photographer must be thunk before you decide what to do with your hands.

Our photographs are a result of how we think about the world, the scenes in front of us, and how our perceptions of those scenes can be translated into a picture by our creative use of the camera.

If you and I were photographing together and you asked me, “What are you looking for?” your actual question would be, “What are you thinking?” It’s not how I use my eyes that you’d be inquiring about, but what I think about what those eyes are seeing. And when I’m alone, sitting in the presence of some wild thing and failing to make the beauty translate to the picture, I usually ask myself the same kind of question: “How should I be thinking about this?”

When the process is challenging, it’s not my eyes that aren’t working; it’s my mind. As a starting point, it sometimes helps to think about specific things and look for them. One of those things is contrast.

The contrasts or differences in the scene are often something we can build a photograph around. That could be a contrast of tones or of colours. It might be a contrast of shape, texture, or line. A contrast between the sizes of elements, perhaps, or the magical contrast of light.

It might be a contrast of ideas, what we usually call juxtaposition. Organic and inorganic in one frame. Hard and soft. Old and new. Ancient and modern. Predator and prey.

And it could also be contrasts that will only really come to life when I amplify them with the camera. A contrast of moving subjects against stationary backgrounds made clearer with a slow shutter speed. A contrast of focused elements against those I allow to blur with a wide aperture. Even the contrast between highlight and shadow might look one way to my eye, but magnified in effect by my exposure choices.

It is not necessarily true that the stronger the contrast, the stronger the photograph, but I think it’s certainly the case that more interesting contrasts captivate us. I don’t know why, but I know that we’re drawn to the differences. And I know this:

The fewer interesting contrasts I see in an image, the fewer mood and story hooks there are on which to hang my emotions and my imagination.

Not all contrast is helpful. We’ve all looked at a scene where the light is hot and contrasty, but not in a good way. Some colours contrast in an unappealing way. And there might be other contrasts in a scene that pull the eye, but not how you’d hoped. And maybe that’s what I’m getting at: contrast naturally pulls the eye. You can use that intentionally or pretend it’s not there, but it won’t pull the eye any less without you making some decisions. Maybe that’s where wider apertures and shallower depth of field help. Maybe a longer lens to exclude those unwanted contrasting elements. Perhaps this is when you convert the image with clashing colours into black and white.

Before you mash that shutter button or spin the dials, it’s worth asking which contrasts you see in the scene and if there’s a way—either with the camera or in post-processing—to draw my attention to them. It might just be that all you need to do is notice them and follow whichever instincts take over from there, but I know that learning to see is about learning to notice, and we notice things we think about.

So think about contrasts. Maybe look at some of your photographs today and seek out the differences. Contrast isn’t everything, but it’s one element I see in the best images. And when you’re sitting down doing post-production, asking where the interesting contrast is and how you might want to amplify it is a worthy question.

Without differences between elements, we have nothing to look at, no hook on which to hang our interest. The more interesting those differences, the more intentionally you work with them, the stronger your photographs have a chance of becoming. The more you think about this, the more you’ll see it.

For the Love of the Photograph,
David