Patience

Photography is all about patience, you can't rush your self when it comes to photography (although sometimes it is necessary to push and be fast).

Especially when you take photo in a place with a lot person, like station, market, and etc. Sometimes human can be useful to show a scale (how big the building or the view is), but too much people can ruin your photos.

Example of scaling using people inside your frame

There are 2 ways to erase or reduce this people in your composition. 1. You can edit them in post-production (Photoshop is one of the choice) 2. Straight from the camera with long-exposure technique

I prefer the second way, it's easier and more efficient to work with. Bad thing about this technique is that you must have extra patience, and the people inside your frame has to move (not stand still). if not, they gonna leave weird spot in your photo.

as you can see there is weird spot in the photo of atomium that distract the image in whole. this is caused by the slow movement by the people or simply there are too much people standing or passing through that spot, but if you are patience enough you can get a clean smooth photo like this

It took me 15 minutes to make this exposure as there were a lot of people passing through my composition. I need to wait for that decisive moment (as Henri Cartier-Bresson said) to make the photo that i want, and as you can see it all paid off when i get this clean exposure of Antwerpen Centraal-Station

So be patient, don't rush yourself, and wait for that decisive moment that will make your composition perfect.

Quote : “To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.” (Henri Cartier-Bresson)