Framing a landscape

I'm not saying this is a great shot of Gundagai in NSW, Australia but it does illustrate how you can frame or balance an image. You can crop it to achieve a similar effect, too.

Anyway, see on the left, the tree? When composing the shot I could've chosen to capture the whole tree but it would have looked unbalanced - a big tree on the left, not much bulk on the right. You can reduce the bulk by just shooting half the tree, as I have done here. I could crop it on the right as well but I liked the rising hill in the background and didn't want to lose it. The hill plus the smaller tree help to balance the bigger tree on the left. Sometimes a convenient branch will be available to frame the top as well. In this shot the depth of the panorama is intensified by the dark trees in the foreground. (It may have been even better if I had walked down the hill some more and shot in front of the trees. Oh well.)

Nephila - orb weaver

The odd arachnid photo is always a good idea. Get close. Not too close. Depth of field is important, depending upon what you are shooting and the amount of light. A spider in its web? Not a fast shot - unless it moves. Stop down as much as you can to get depth of field or go wide open and accept that all except what's in focus will be a blur. Shoot a few times at different apertures and see the effect.