"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Luke 6:41

And so, here I write again, this time regarding a very common situation we photographers often find ourselves in. It seems so basic. You go out and find a great place to take some pictures, and set up the tripod or whatever rig you use, and snap away some real gems. Great weather, check. It's not blowing and it's still, check. Exposure and everything on the mark, check.

You take your pictures, stop on the way home to have a bite to eat and maybe grab a coffee (or whatever beverage you prefer) and you get home. Time passes and you get to your pictures, and looking through them you start to notice things you didn't see when you were reviewing them on the camera screen.

One of them has a branch from a tree dangling in the corner of the frame. Another one has a person coming up the trail looking at you. Another one - oh how did that signpost get in the way. Yet another, and you ask, I got the telephone pole wires in there?

As you can guess, we photographers need to be aware of our surroundings. We need to pay careful attention to what is in our camera's line of sight. We need to make sure we don't have any unnecessary objects that can grab our attention from our subject being photographed. In other words, we need to avoid distractions.

One of the things I learned early on particularly when it came to building portfolios for microstock sites such as Shutterstock and Getty Images, etc., is that they are very particular and critical of submitted photos having these distractions in the image, and rightfully so.

It really does take away from a beautiful majestic view of something scenic and in the foreground you have someone walking by or a branch sticking out from the side; a glaring rusty pole sticking out like a sore thumb, or part of a bright umbrella in the corner edge, and so on.