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I saw an article¹ that compared the way several experienced artists eyes tracked an image vs the eyes of self proclaimed 'non-artists'. The difference was striking, the difference was compounded when the groups were asked to draw the images that they had looked at.



The non artists eyes focussed on the center and the details, eyes, lips, nose, sun, moon and when asked to draw a duplicate there rendering had disproportional details like large eyes, lips sun, moon and were poorly aligned.

The artists eyes uniformly tracked the image with a random tracking pattern, seeing the 'big picture'.

So for me I'm always trying to re-learn to look at something not for the details but for the larger shapes and proportions and when looking through a viewfinder I "frame for the edges", I practice by looking quickly at an image then close my eyes and try to rebuild that image in my head.(Ken Rockwell?) With photography it's easy to just try and just compose to get everything in the shot, but removing items is what makes the shot interesting, keep you guessing. In your head re-framing objects becomes effortless and you have to think about whole objects not just the details. Oh and skip rule of thirds!

1. Eye tracking article scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/03/artists_look_diff...

Also Check out this Flickr discussion on the topic, some Great tips!

"Choose a single subject and shoot it every day. Flowers, building, your kid... it doesn't matter, but you gotta come up with 60 different shots of the same thing."
"Get Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography