>>3638495this one is very nice, you just need to crop out the unnecessary (read: distracting) stuff
>>3638496also has a lot of potential
>>3638558>but is missing something that I can't quite identifyit's not "missing something" in the sense that you need to add something, instead there's too many distracting elemnets you need to remove
You have to realize that photography is a subtractive art form. Compare that to an additive art form like painting. In painting, you start with a blank canvas, and add layers of paint to build up to your final image. In photography, you start with a messy canvas (the world), and it's your job to isolate the subject and keep only the relevant, visually interesting details.
I often think photography is taught wrong, it's not about "what should i shoot", it should be "what should i NOT shoot", because teaching "what to shoot" leads to beginners trying to look for pieces to add to a composition (additive), rather than trying to take away the garbage that makes their snapshits shit (subtractive). Too often you see people trying to deliberately look for "foreground interest" or "leading lines" to intentionally add to their picture, but all it ends up doing is cluttering and distracting from the subject.
One good exercise to practice is just this:
>Identify your subject>Recompose to remove as many distracting elements before you take the photoYou'll have to do this by recomposing, moving around, crouching down and standing down and trying to play with perspectives, since there'll always be some distracting background or foreground element. It's the same reason many portrait photographers use bokeh: it's a tool to control distracting foreground/background elements by blurring it away.
So instead of looking for things that "look pretty" and trying to add them to your photograph, try looking for what is ugly/distracting remove them from the frame before you press the shutter.
