Composition Tips — The Most Interesting Part Might Not Be The Main Attraction

Lantern, Meiji Jingu Tokyo

A small lantern on the pathway leading to Meiji Jingu (shrine) introduces a calm and peaceful setting into the woods.


Of the 5300+ or so images I took this trip, a lot of them have nothing to do with the main attraction. When we visit temples and shrines and UNESCO World Heritage sites, I’ve found time and time again that the main building or attraction is less interesting to me than the details on the side. I took 5300+ photos on the trip and narrowed them down based on composition and technical sufficiency. I’m still not done, but I’m omitting about 4000 so far. Then, I’m narrowing them down further and making touchups to the best which are the resulting photos on this blog. In other words, after I’m picky about the photos I do take, I reduce my photo stack 3 times before I post the images here.



As I look through those photos for the blog, I find that a lot of them aren’t pictures of the main attraction. At a large temple building, I’m more interested in the gardens around the side than the building itself. I tend to avoid taking overview images of these large buildings because they don’t look photographically good to me in my view finder. I sometimes do if the building looks exceptionally special but for the most part, I’m left with images somewhere between details and overviews. Besides, one can easily google images of all the attractions and find fantastic results.

Nihombashi Bridge, Tokyo
The Nihombashi Bridge, for example, is a difficult bridge to photograph from the side because there isn’t a lot of access to the river and there is a freeway overhead. From either end of the bridge it doesn’t appear like much, just a typical bridge with small statues at the end of the railings. I choose to photograph a part of it that included the statues at the centre of the span as well as the freeway overhead. This contrast between the new and old was a better representation of the bridge as it shows how living in the shadow of the modern, the importance of Nihombashi Bridge has been almost forgotten. I also waited about 10 minutes for this photo so that I had the right mix of people at the right spots in the photograph (at either end of the picture) without cars or people on the sidewalk right in front of the camera blocking my view. Patience is always key in making the surrounding people fit into a photo rather than look like a quick-snapped photo for Facebook.



A lot of temples don’t allow photos inside which is fine with me because I don’t like taking photos of Buddhas and such. It allows for an appreciation of the religion and temple that I don’t think a lot of tourists fully understand. A lot of times, going to temples and such, there are a lot of foreign tourists looking around and taking as many photos as they can without taking a minute to pause and admire where they are.

Ancient Nara

The tree speaks of a quiet road of stone lantern in a place few venture.
I wouldn’t want to spend all my time travelling rushing to get hundreds and thousands of photos of everything I see just to document it and post them all to Facebook with every photo looking almost the same as the last. Rather, I find it is important to take a minute to appreciate all these new places I go and photograph them in a way that speaks to the atmosphere and feeling of the place.

Ueno Park, Tokyo

There was a man juggling to music in the square of the park. Behind him and off to the side was a small entrance into the trees. While Yukes parents watched the performance, I was more interested in where this little pathway might take me and I was excited to find that it lead back down to a small shrine we had passed earlier but were unable to stop at. Yukes came down soon after and on the way back I composed this photo as I was thinking of the Fushimi Inari Shrine (with 1000 torii gates) that I still want to see.
Composition Tip — Look to the edges of an attraction where there are fewer people for more interesting features.