One of my favorite tricks for turning what might be a ho-hum picture into a high impact picture is filling the frame. If you just move in close to your subject, your image will appear more compelling.

To illustrate this, we'll pull two pictures from our trusty clipart library. In the first, the photographer took a fine picture of a marina, but nothing stands out, as you can see in Figure A.

FIGURE A

A quite fine marina photo. Click picture for a larger image.

However, in Figure B, the photographer zoomed in on the foreground boat, virtually filling the frame with it.

FIGURE B

You can see the difference. Click picture for a larger image.

You can certainly see the difference between the two pictures. Filling the frame is a very simple process. Simply zoom in on your subject, making your subject take up the bulk of your frame. Let's use one of my photos as an example. In Figure C, I zoomed in on the front of the airplane, and it gives you a completely different view of the craft than you'd normally see.

FIGURE C

Let's zoom in on the nose cone. Click picture for a larger image.

As we zoom in on the nose cone and use our imaginations, we can see a nose (the cone), eyes (the lights), and even a mouth (the grill). We know that Japanese car designers have been known to use living creatures for inspiration. Did the designers of this small plane do the same?

If you look closely at this image, you can see some dirt and grime on the cowl. Removing it would have been relatively quick work in Photoshop, but I chose to keep the original visage of the craft, feeling that the verisimilitude led credibility to this almost whimsical photo. And yes, I had to look up the spelling of "verisimilitude".

Let's use one more example from my own work. As you can see in Figure D, I filled the frame with the lifeboat.

FIGURE D

I filled the frame with the lifeboat. Click picture for a larger image.

Taken at Mystic Seaport, this was a challenge to save. Although the boat does fill most of the frame, much of the original image, shown in Figure E, was hidden in shadow.

FIGURE E

This is the original image. You can see where reconstruction was needed. Click picture for a larger image.

While I could dodge and burn most of the image to bring out the details, I actually had to recreate by hand, digitally, much of the wood trim the boat's sitting upon. You can see some of where my digital work intersected the original if you look very closely.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.