Simplification is a great tool for creating photographs with artistic quality – it stays away from unnecessary/obvious things and helps the image not to be “busy”.  

I was searching various blogs and forums about how to simplify photographs. Most of the blogs and articles say the following two things:

1.	Zoom in/ Crop
2.	Use Shallow depth of field

A third tip seen some places is to use low shutter speed, if it is photograph of a lake, sea, etc. But I am not photographing water.

The above two pieces of advice do not add any artistic value, when I see the images. They just include fewer things – but they don’t look simple, albeit the fact that they have fewer elements.

Apart from these trivial bits of advice, what are the composition techniques/guidelines that will help to create `simplified` photographs?

Note: As you know the word "simple" and "simplified" are pretty much different, when it comes to design and composition.