Including or excluding people in photos? Colonial facade A section of a golf course     Icons of Kuala Lumpur Hong Kong's Lippo building Look at the above four photos closely. Study them if you can. Then look at the other four below. And study them again. After that, compare the photos below with those above. Is there anything amiss? Right. The title of this issue is itself the answer to the question. There are not any people in the above photos, just buildings and landscapes, while those below have many living subjects. Okay, the photos above and those below do not have the same subject matters but that is not the point here. Inside a watch shop Tourists at a city park     A typical suburban scene Lobby of HK's Chek Lap Kok airport Just take a moment and ask yourself whether any of the four photos without human elements would make better pictures as they are now or can they be improved further (or made worse) by the inclusion of people? Then ask the same question again for the other four photos that have people in them. Will they look better without people or worse? And why? For a start, simplifying the elements in a photograph means keeping what's important IN and what is not OUT. This is one of the three essential questions that every professional photographer always asks prior to clicking the shutter. However, there are times when this rule is hard to apply, especially when some of the distracting elements happen to be people. The inclusion /exclusion of people in a photograph is a matter of opinion - some photographers don't like it, while others do. This also applies to photo editors from the newspapers, picture agencies and magazines. The decision to include or exclude people from the photographs has something to do with the type of message/theme the photographer wants the image to convey. Some scenes require people in them to make them work while others look better without any at all. For example, the photo of the Chek Lap Kok Airport's lobby has to show people using it; otherwise, it will be inappropriate to have one of the world's busiest airports looking empty, doesn't it? Likewise, the angle of which the icons of Kuala Lumpur were photographed would have looked ridiculous if people were to be included there. << Back to Main . 1 . 2 . 3 .