They say the devil’s in the detail. So it helps keep it in view. And, if you need another reason, make it the fact that they’re simply amazing. Detail shots are an easy way to give prominence to things that could easily be overlooked; talk of making mountains of molehills.
The instinctive thing is for everyone else to see what’s right in before them. It just comes easy. The problem with that is, we may end up so charmed by the hints and clues before us that we end up seeing things only as they want to be seen.
While there’s absolutely no crime in letting the subject (or scene) speak to us, every standout photographer knows to seek out the unseen angles and hidden perspectives. You want to be in charge of what you see and how you tell the story. You want to seek out the not-so-obvious views that present new dimensions. Otherwise, you stand the fatal risk of being like ‘everyone else’.
There’s no limit to what’s possible in search of new perspectives: panning, tilting, zooming, etc; all fair game. A detail shot, however, requires you (more than anything else) to ‘move in’. This magnifies the subject and keeps everything else out or ‘quiet’.
If you’re shooting a zoom, you have two options: move around or zoom from a fixed position. With a prime, there’s no getting around the need to move. I personally like to move as close to my subject as possible regardless of whether I’m shooting a prime or zoom. Helps to keep the ‘zoom noise’ down.
Another option to reveal closer details (regardless of how you’ve shot the image) is to crop in post-production. But that’s best as a last resort.
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Quick Tip: If you’re all about the detail, you want to stick with lenses that allow you get remarkably close to the subject. “Macro“s, typically!
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Feel free to post your thoughts or ask questions about this picture.