Photographs are taken to be looked at - either by
yourself or by an audience small or large. Here, I would like to suggest something that can improve the viewing experience for your audience: ORDER.
Order is half the battle (or half the life as the German proverb suggests) of many things related to your photography. Order is half the battle when you try to retrieve a specific photograph from the depths of your hard drive, but more importantly also improves the viewing experience for your audience. Galleries comprised of unique photographs with a unifying theme help the viewer appreciate your vision.
Our brain detects and memorizes ordered patterns and structures. Therefore, a photo gallery makes a greater and more memorable impression if a unifying theme is immediately recognizable. In contrast, the viewer will be bored and distracted by too many variations of the same. In too broadly defined galleries, the photographs will seem unrelated,
random shots of whatever came in front of your lens, while too narrowly
defined themes harbor the danger of look-alike compositions that will
not be appreciable on their own.
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Light & shadow on a facade in Hong Kong |
Sometimes I have difficulties delineating and defining photography themes and to find the happy medium between too narrow and too broad. I try to break up the classical themes such as "landscapes" or "cityscapes" into smaller and more defined themes and to show only a small selection, a kind of portfolio, for each theme in the primary gallery (a maximum of 12 photographs in my galleries). Currently, the publicly listed order on floriansphotos is the following:
- Cityscapes: Broad views of man made environments
- City trees: Trees in city environments where man made structures are part of the composition
- Drapes & blinds: Hidden beauty of drapes & blinds!
- Facades: A spin-off from cityscapes to do justice and unify the many photographs of facades
- Light & shadow: A theme that I like a lot!
- Reflections: Reflective views
- Tree shadows: Shadows of trees that decorate walls and other surfaces
- Animals: I do not have many photographs in this category
- Autumn colors: Colorful impressions from my favorite season!
- Cultivated flowers: At the moment only containing Dahlia photographs - more will follow
- Landscapes: Broad views of natural landscapes (in my case mostly mountainscapes)
- Macro: Close-up views of natural details - wildflowers will be featured in a separate gallery
- Trees: Trees from far away and close by
I hope you enjoy and wish you a good weekend,
Florian.