Huge skies

A cool way to compose an outdoor subject is to include a huge expanse of sky.  This makes the subject diminuative even though it might be quite large.  This is Bled Castle above Lake Bled in Slovenia, and this rendition of it is a favorite of mine.  Sure, it helps if the sky is dramatic, and on this day I was lucky.  But . . . many of my travel pictures didn't have a great sky until I replaced it in Photoshop.  My point, though, is that this kind of composition is dramatic and visually arresting.  Usually we immediate grab a telephoto to zoom in and fill the frame with the subject.  That is certainly a vallid approach, and I suggest doing that as well.  Don't overlook, though, a wider shot where the subject is placed at the bottom of the frame and where the sky commands a dominant role in the picture. My settings for this picture were 1/6, f/11, 200 ISO and I took the shot with a 24-105mm lens.  I used a tripod, of course.