Recent tasks brought this one to mind, an aspect of composition that can have significant effect but often remains entirely subconscious, so let’s talk about the subtle and tricky topic of impressions.
First off, I’ll say that from my own perspective, I more often stumble upon an image that provokes a certain impression, more so than I’ll actively aim for it, much less create it; there are certainly circumstances where I recognize the potential and intend to incorporate it, but it’s more often that I’m reviewing images afterward and am struck by how it makes me feel, or what it seems to say, or most especially, what the subject’s expression makes us believe they’re thinking. When it comes to wildlife, this is usually entirely wrong, but that doesn’t mean that these impressions still can’t serve a purpose, even just for amusement.
The first portion of this that we’ll tackle is the disconnect. While we know where we are and what’s happening when we’re taking the photo, the conditions and surroundings and so on, the viewer only sees what we’ve included in the frame, which can be representative of the true conditions or not, as we see fit. It’s often not too hard to present a placid and pristine natural setting by studiously avoiding having any aspect that says otherwise within the frame, never revealing that right behind us runs a major interstate highway, for instance. What goes to the edge of the frame goes on forever, is what I’m fond of saying – not quite accurate, perhaps, but the idea is that the viewer believes what they see represents what was there.
And this can be important to just about any kind of photography – we don’t just see the subject, whatever it may be, but the setting as well, and this should carry the impression that we want to convey. A hawk sitting on the edge of a building is no longer either nature or wildlife photography – I say that not from arrogantly defining the terms, but only from how others will view the image. But it works fine to illustrate urban wildlife encroachment, or adaptation, or simply surprise – what’s that doing here? But overall, even if we’re only illustrating the markings of a reptile, the image works better if the setting expresses an accurate habitat.
Then there’s expression, and while it is often challenging enough to get a human model to effectively communicate, “pleasantly surprised,” this is exponentially harder to produce from any animal subject; it’s usually a serendipitous discovery rather than an intentional effort when capturing the image, especially when such a large number of animal subjects do not use such expressions in any way. Yet there are still some things that we can do to help this along, changing our shooting angle or watching for the head tilt or shift of eyes. A simple little thing like the head shifting forward slightly can convey intensity of attention. And of course looking upward is positive, optimistic, unthreatened (unless there’s some aspect of ‘cower’ involved,) while looking down might be predatory, or disdainful, or simply depressed. It can help a lot to recognize how we might interpret these things as we see them. Take it from me, however: getting down to eye-level with your subject greatly improves your chances of generating a specific impression.
The initial task that brought this topic to mind illustrates many of the factors involved. A friend needed paired images that said, ‘True,’ and, ‘False,’ but should ideally be matching, abstract yet interesting, and easy to discern quickly and from a moderate distance – there were additional details in that they couldn’t be mistaken for any other images that we were already using, in colors or shapes, but the initial criteria were tricky enough. I mean, what image comes to mind when you think of, ‘True?’ And of course, I have no such categories in my stock folders and could only pick through thousands of images trying to find ones that could be interpreted in those ways, mostly in the Scenic/Abstract folders.
[Was I successful? Well, we’ve settled on a handful of images that can work, but I don’t think either one of us is satisfied yet, no images that make us say, “Yeah, that works!” I’m still not just keeping my eye out while reviewing images, but thinking of potential new concepts as well.]
It’s often easier than that, though. Light color expresses temperature pretty well, since we know (subconsciously, mostly) that overcast days limit the red and yellow spectrum of sunlight, so light that is mostly blue spells out, ‘cold.’ Which also means that orange light is considered, ‘warm,’ something that too many TV and film directors use rather hamhandedly. Contrast and shadows provide their own impressions, sometimes of direct sunlight or, ‘being in the spotlight,’ sometimes specifically not. Blurring means motion or speed, also communicated at times with windblown hair or fur. Sunrise conditions almost always say, ‘quiet,’ among anything else. And if you’re planning on expressive images of abandoned buildings, you’d better bring along a little doll to discard into a corner someplace.
Okay, try to avoid the clichés when you can, but admittedly, clichés can still express what you need them to, and if the idea is to provide an immediate and unmistakable impression, sometimes a cliché is handy. Monochrome images dance exuberantly back and forth across the border between ‘trite’ and ‘expressive’ – simply converting to B&W often isn’t enough by itself, but selecting the right image for it can definitely work.
Being able to recognize something that provides a distinct impression is very handy for accent pieces and background illustrations – for art prints on a wall of course, but also to hint at an underlying mood. Yet, for commissioned works or advertising purposes, you often have to create those impressions. Just street photography can be tricky in eliminating all of the factors that might provide a negative impression (if that is not your explicit goal): trash, worn paint, cars that need work, people who are obviously not happy, and so on. When shooting weddings, I knew I had a roughly thirty-second window of capturing the couple’s first dance, when the guests were all looking on with smiles. Past that time, attentions wandered, people turned away or started quietly conversing among themselves, even sneaking a little food, and having that in the shot simply doesn’t work. And believe me, your eyes will go straight to that one person. For any photography, spotting the subtle little distractions and keeping them from your frame is important, but doubly so if you’re trying to foster a distinct mood or idea. You have to see everything, as well as nailing your timing. Candid groups of people can be especially hard, and photographers may often take lots of frames hoping to capture one where nobody is forming a distraction to the overall idea.
We can’t forget what you can do in post, either. If you need to foster more of an impression than the original provides, or simply see the potential, a little editing in the program of your choice can make a huge difference. The parts above about color temperature and contrast will likely provide most of what you need, but some selective lightening or darkening can alter things nicely, something that cinematographers know all too well. And here is where you can occasionally remove those distractions that you missed when taking the photo. I’m never a fan of altering images beyond cropping or slight color corrections, preferring to get the intended image right the first time, and so I don’t push people in this direction, but at times it serves a purpose. Always remember that changing images that contain people is inherently asking for trouble, and alterations are widely frowned upon for journalistic uses, where it becomes “editorializing’ rather than ‘witnessing.’ Tread carefully, but preferably, not at all.
So there are some ideas to get you started, but by no means a complete list or the best examples (I never claimed to be perfect.) It’s often trickier than it might seem, but when it works, you know it. Give it a shot, and be creative.
[And if you have any decent ideas for ‘True’ and ‘False,’ let me know.]
Color correction. Again, typically covered by most programs quite well, though using this effectively becomes almost an art form in itself. Many programs have a Curves function which allows you to strengthen or weaken colors within particular brightness ranges, which might seem confusing until you learn how it works. Briefly, I’ll point out that sunlight and shadows actually have different color registers, and you can mimic or reduce the effect of these as needed: for photos taken in bright sunlight, the shadows will lack some of the red and yellow color registers that are present in the highlights, so you may want to reduce this effect, or accentuate it, depending on the image and usage itself.
Dodging/Burning. This is a method of selectively lightening or darkening very specific portions of an image, usually in the shape and size of whatever ‘brush’ you like. Definitely handy to draw attention to, or away from, areas in the image that got too little or too much light, very easy to do with nature photography. But so you know, perhaps one out of every 35-50 images seen on these pages have been treated in this way – sharpening takes place only a little more often, about half of those just to compensate for reducing details in the web resolution version of an image.
Less-than-column-width images, which may be placed alongside text (or ads or whatever,) present their own little foibles. Many images have a ‘direction,’ most noticeable if there are eyes in the image looking left or right, but even just the subject placement or the lines of the composition can influence us to believe it’s facing ‘left.’ As such, we typically want the direction to lead us ‘into’ the page or text, facing the center rather than the outer edge, though on occasion (like a book layout,) such implied direction can lead us on to the next page. Overall, however, picking the placement of the image to take advantage of this direction is better. Know, too, that people will usually see the image before they read the text alongside, so if the text really should precede someone seeing the image, don’t place it alongside, but above – sometimes well above, if the ‘surprise’ or ‘reveal’ is crucial.
However, shoot video horizontally. 
Timing of conditions is another important aspect. Sure, it’s easy to know that sunrises and sets are ideal times (sometimes, anyway,) but it helps to know that the light and sky conditions will change noticeably within minutes or even seconds, as well as the chance that something photogenic will enter the frame; the sailboat may have only a moment or three when it turns at the right angle to throw a reflection from the hull or catch light through the sail, as well as when it passes across the glitter trail, the reflections of the sun on the water. Yet, changes can occur at any time of the day, such as when the breeze moves the leaves or stalks in the right direction, or tosses the fur of your subject just right. And the light can change, sometimes suddenly on partly-cloudy days, which changes the reflections, the color cast, the contrast, and the shadows, all factors in how the photo looks. Colorful subjects look better in lower-contrast light, like hazy or partly-cloudy, while textures look better with higher contrast and sharper shadows, so turning towards those subjects as the light changes can give you much better results.
And then there are events, which may be as specific as an astronomical event or even just a 
Wear a plain black shirt and/or pants – This won’t completely eliminate the reflections that you yourself will make, but it helps.
The first part that I’ll talk about is perhaps the easiest, which is illustration. Just about every photographer ends up tackling such a thing at one time or another; some of us do it routinely. But even product photography requires a certain skill to portray the product in the best manner possible – sometimes this is angle and lighting, sometimes this is the right setting or background, and sometimes this is elaborate staging. When we’re trying to show something in particular, it’s important to give the correct impression to the viewer, and the first step is knowing what this should be in the first place. Following close behind is detaching ourselves from the sense of place that we have, just being there, and recognizing whether or not the viewer can get the same sense (or, even better, an entirely different one that we nonetheless express, falsely as it were.) That might be a bit confusing in the abstract, so let me provide an example. We know, from simply being there, that we’re at the beach, or someplace late at night, or whatever, but the image doesn’t necessarily express this unless we include the necessary details therein. Conversely, many of my macro shots, while done in broad daylight, still look like they were done at night, because the aperture and shutter speed reduce the ambient light so far that it doesn’t expose the image very well, while the flash unit provides the main lighting for the subject, yet fails to reach the background. But even showing someone at their profession or hobby takes having an adequate representation of those within the frame. For an artist, it’s not enough to show them drawing on a canvas; we should have a variety of artistic tools visible as well. If we think of an image illustrating a pilot, we ask, what kind of pilot? Commercial, military, bush, glider? Only the knowledgeable viewer would be able to tell these from a glimpse of controls and gauges, so we need to provide more details to inform all of the viewers of what they need to know. Even the subject’s basic appearance and expression counts for a lot – a portrait of a nurse is likely to require an entirely different expression from a portrait of a judge, to give the impression that we want to give. And of course, knowing how to evoke these from a subject, especially so they look natural and not forced, is a huge skillset all its own.
Much harder is the genre of photojournalism, which is what most people think of when we talk about an image with a story. In most cases, we have no ability to stage any portion of the shot, or even mess with lighting, so we have to take it as it is and still get the message across. This means framing and timing become the most important aspects to control, sometimes the only things we have control over. Many times, it means anticipating some particular aspect – action or expression, mostly – and firing off the shutter the moment it happens. An acute awareness of everything in the photo is often necessary. I often tell my students about my wedding photography days, when I was after the ‘first dance’ of the newlyweds. There is actually a very narrow timeframe when the elements tend to come together, because if the guests are in the shot, you want them all looking at the happy couple with delight or warm expressions – one guest looking away, or bored, or eating, is going to spoil the mood of the shot, and this becomes more likely as the seconds pass. Meanwhile, try to find a shooting angle which shows both faces of a couple that are facing one another. And a decent background. And good lighting. These are the kind of things that beginning wedding photographers rarely realize are the skills they never thought to develop. Which is why I say that you save money on a photographer at your own risk.
We read the expressions of any given animate subject (and some inanimate ones,) and nearly every photo can benefit from having something more expressive, more emotional, than simply a straightforward shot. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of observation, and finding the right angle, but most often it takes timing and anticipation. It’s easier with people of course, because they express the emotions that we’re familiar with and we often know when they’re due to arrive. With animals it’s usually very different – most times it doesn’t occur unless the animal is relaxed and acting normally, which is much trickier for wildlife, but can even be a chore when the family pet knows we’re up to something. But for most species, they don’t actually express the emotions we recognize, and when we get something that appears expressive, this is more often than not simply a mistaken impression – which still works just fine, we just can’t anticipate or even provoke it.
When we view the photos themselves, however, we tend to see most of the details. I suspect this is because, in the open world, there’s too many individual objects to pay attention to, and we pick the ones that our brains tell us are important. There’s also undoubtedly the visual aspect, most especially of depth perception, where we focus on something in particular and other things, out of focus, just don’t attract our attention. A photo is just one object, however, and we tend to think of it as ‘complete’ – what’s in there is intended to be in there and thus has some importance to the scene, mood, idea, whatever. Depth is flattened, with distance and separation between elements lessened or even eliminated, so background trees can easily blend into foreground bushes. It’s something that I warn my students about routinely.
What’s more fun, though often challenging, is to capture subtle details that don’t immediately leap to the viewer’s eye, but can be found on closer examination – there’s a certain delight in the discovery, and a recognition of your efforts to put together a clever image. Initially you may miss these yourself, but over time you’ll develop an ability to notice small details, or realize that a different approach might yield something twice as interesting. In a lot of ways being able to see things that others miss is a mark of a creative photographer, and can make the difference between a nice photo and a captivating one. It also helps to know what kind of 
There’s also a knack to seeing a particular element – a certain shape, or a certain color, or just a specific object – and realizing that it would work best when composed with another element, such as a contrasting color or complementary shape, then seeing if this can actually be accomplished; a simple example would be a yellow flower with another color blossom offsetting it from the background, which could require a significant shift from a ‘normal’ position to line the two up, but the end result is magnitudes better than the flower among neighbors of the same color, which is what everyone else sees.