An ordinary composition of a photograph will contain one or more subjects as focal points and a surrounding consisting of other objects. The subjects and the environment around them are the tools with which the observer will build his assumptions about where the photo was taken, what happened then, and what message it tries to convey, if any. All this is good, but what if another impact on the observer is desired? What if you want to leave little hints, in order to keep him guessing?

Boring surroundings may have a very bad effects on your subject, because, most probably, they will not have elements to balance the photographs, leaving a lot of empty spaces. An effective remedy to this is to fill the frame with your subject, so as to get rid of these empty spaces.

Moving closer to your subjects can make your photo more interesting by removing the surroundings altogether. For example, consider this situation in which you are photographing a wild animal at the zoo. With a normal composition, you will probably include the animal, the cage, and maybe some spectators. But if you fill your photo's frame with the animal's face only, anyone might think that it was taken in the wild. Another common use of close-ups is to make the observer use his imagination to come up with different stories from a single photograph .A close-up on two hands holding each others will strike a certain emotion that may be different from one person to the other, depending on his experience. The focus here is on the action being performed, rather than who is performing it.

Portraits are usually a strong candidate for closeups. While taking a portrait inside a specific environment is always nice, close-up portraits are used to give a very different sort of experience. A portrait in which your subject fills the whole frame gives some sort of a personalized feeling. Getting even closer to just include the face – sometimes with eye contact – can bring a feeling of amicability, as if you were staying face to face with the subject. Close-ups on other body parts produce great photos too; they may create an abstract feel, or emphasize a certain action.

Even with still life, close-ups work great. This allows you to see usual things in very unusual ways, revealing many details that were not obvious before. This kind of photography is usually used in stock and product photography.

Zooming and cropping are the tools used to create close-ups. While zooming is an on-camera process, cropping is usually done using photo-editing software, giving you more flexibility to set your composition, but with sacrificing the image's original size.

The simplest compositions may sometimes be the richest. So use your imagination, and make your audience use theirs.

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