In researching composition in digital photography I found many techniques that can be used tot ake better photo's such as, angle of view, balance, perspective, drawing the viewer's eyes into the photo and visual cropping which is the technique I chose to focus on.
Visual cropping
"Crop your photos visually before you take them. Look into the corners of the viewfinder. Do you see things that shouldn't be there? You can remove, or crop, these elements from your photos simply by moving closer to your subject, zooming in on your subject, or moving your subject within the viewfinder. Try different angles. Look for anything that will diminish the impact of unwanted objects in your photos." (
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/learnmore/composition.mspx)
I chose to focus on visual cropping because I had to take a quick trip to CT this weekend and on my way home yesterday the clouds over the mountains were amazing looking. But as I was taking pictures (while I was driving, which you should never do), I was running into an issue with road signs and cars in the picture. So rather than take the picture through my windsheild I tried to take it through my side window and at different angles through my windows to eliminate the vehicles and road signs, thus using the visual cropping technique. I will post those pictures next in a different post. They are incredible. I can't beleive all the different techniques that I was unaware of.
These are the pics I took on my trip home from CT yesterday. As you can see in the top photo the road sign really sticks out and ruins the photo. In the second and thrid photo, although there is a car in the bottom right hand corner of the second photo and cars in the bottom center of the thrid photo, they are not the primary focus and your eye is drawn to the clouds and mountains in the picture rather then the insignificant items.
