I’ve been really into the concept of “layering” recently.

It’s the theme of this month’s Photo Challenge in my community, which you can find here: https://positivephotocommunity.com/feed

This theme is important to me because I want to keep improving as a photographer, and adding “layers” to photographs is one way to do this.

You see, this photo is a good one. I like it. I put it on my Etsy shop because I think modern farmhouse homeowners might like to purchase one for their wall.

BUT – can I use Layers to make this photo better?

First, I tried to use the road and the other barn next to it for a better photograph:

And… I’m not sure if it’s better. I think it’s not. It’s just kind of boring to me. The road is supposed to lead the viewer into the photo, and it does… but overall the photo is kind of dull. The road is too boring or… something. It’s just not great.

So… I moved closer to get some details like these two shots of the open window:

Again, these are fine. I like the one where you can see the outside window better because it has context to it. The first one with the detail of the wood inside the barn just doesn’t work. The viewer doesn’t understand what they are looking at.

So when I moved around noticed the moon! YAY!

BUT – this photo is too tight. It’s not a great one for my print shop because this photo is difficult to crop to multiple dimensions.

So in this case, my near-final photo becomes this one:

Here I’m including the two windows and the moon, but giving myself some room to crop a little bit for people who might order different-sized prints. This crop gives me a few more options.

I still wish I would have stepped a bit farther back. I think I cropped too tightly to the right on this photo, so my final final “finished” photograph is this one:

This one is more balanced and feels complete to me.

So… that’s the story of this photograph!