A white house

How to make a building or parts of it look interesting? Or how to make the building as one interesting part of the photo?

The starting point is this house here, which itself many interesting details and nice overall look:

First look... yeah, it's a photo. But there just is too many distractions.

- Both sides of the photo are restless

- Plants on the left distract from the building

- Distortion is a bit uneven and awkward

- Tones are bland

- Details are unvisible

- Most of the photo is about dull sky

etc... etc...

What can I do? Of course... To try different compositions. Try to eliminate those distracting components of the photo. If not all at once, try one at a time and go on from there.

In this next photo I've taken the pavement as part of the photo. Also I've lowered the perspective and fixed some distortions. I kept the bland colors, or actually even put them down some to loose the distraction from the plants but also brightened the white tones. Looking much better aye?

The options are endless if you really think of it and I believe there, almost every time, can be found a solution that represents the building well. And this is what I came up with. No distortions, real life colors and contrasts, a little bit of the environment for the feel. Now, this what I saw when I was there. Not the parking lot or railroad cars on the left. By getting closer the building stands out for itself against the right part, which is not that kind of a distraction anymore. Plain easy to look photo of a nice building.

Such buildings, of course, have a lot details due to the buildings aging if not otherwise. Again the compositions are endless but lets just see couple of possibilities.

By concentrating on the door part you get nice frame to the picture naturally. I find this to be quite balanced composition.

You can take the surroundings and make it as part of the photo as well as a subject in it, like this:

Or make the surroundings as a strong main subject and use some of the buildings nice details as balancing element and to make the photo a bit more interesting (compared to without it). Like this:

Now... Go out and find a building you like. And use it!