Stone carvings in the slave market, Dougga. In the distance is the Capitoline Temple. Dougga

This photo serves to illustrate a good point about photography in general and stock photography in particular.  There is a classic photo at Dougga – you will find it in the guide books and on the post cards. 

It is the temple shot framed in the door way:


Dougga, Tunisia

 

I always take the classic shot – sometimes it does sell.  But then I look for a different way to capture the same scene.  The classic photo works because we have a subject (the temple) and a way to draw the viewers attention to it (the door frame).  So I looked around the slave market and decided to use the line of blocks that you can see in today’s POTD as a lead-in the photo.  The line going from bottom left up to the temple servers the same puropose as the door frame it focuses the viewers attention on the photo’s subject (ie the temple). 

So the lesson to learn from this is take the obvious shot.  But then look for a different way of photographing the subject.  If you experiment works – great.  If not you’ve still got the obvious shot “in the bag” to fall back on.