We don’t always need the full picture

When I first started taking photos, I wanted to fit the entire world into the tiny viewfinder. Every picture was about everything in front of me. There wasn’t one specific thing that caught my attention. Everything did.

I didn’t start as a nature photographer. I started as a tourist. One of the first pictures I took was of the United States Capitol Building. I was in Washington, D.C., for a journalism conference, and I decided to venture out to see the city at night. I started at the Capitol, was struck at how it seemed to glow, and decided to take a picture.

I was on the Capitol steps at the time and there it was impossible to fit the entire building into picture. I had a simple point-and-shoot film camera. I had one lens choice. There was no way to zoom out.

So, I walked along the Washington Mall until I reached a point where the entire building would fit into the frame. I believed that was how you were supposed to compose a picture. I wasn’t aware there was another option.

For awhile, that attitude carried over into my nature photography. Photographing a waterfall? Stand back and zoom out until you can see the top and bottom of it in the viewfinder. An animal? It doesn’t matter which kind. Zoom in as much as you can without cropping off any feature. And so on.

It’s a boring approach that results in boring, identification-style photos.

As I began to study art, I took a special interest in Impressionism. Subjects didn’t always fit in the frames; people or objects sometimes spilled over the edges, as if they were moving too fast for the artist to capture. Other times, seemingly important details were hidden behind loose brushstrokes.

Rather than seeing less, I noticed more. Sometimes the detail that was emphasized was not one I would have picked out myself. Other times, the whole piece was a puzzle that encouraged more careful exploration. Mysteries are more interesting than answer keys.

On a recent flight, a very small sliver of Mount Rainier was visible between two bands of clouds. I grew up seeing that mountain from our dining room window. And I found it interesting that the mountain was still immediately recognizable even though 90 percent of it was obscured.

(Kevin’s book, Five Minutes in Nature, collects images and stories about his experiences in the wilderness, curated to help you have deeper encounters of your own. Preview and order it here. Prints of his images are available through LivingWilderness.com. Learn about new work by joining his mailing list.)