The Power of Graphic Simplicity

There is very little in this picture. A moon, a silhouetted mountain range, not much else. Therein, the making of a good photo. Simplify.

Time of Day

Twenty-three and a half hours of the day this scene is just some rocks and some sky. In fact, considering that not every day ends with an epic sunset it is probably even more of a rare scene. The rarer the scene (in general) the better the photo.

This photo should also serve as a good reminder. When you are shooting that epic sunset you may be missing the best photo opportunities behind you.

Monochrome Need Not Mean Boring

What do you think of when you hear "monochrome"? You think black and white, right? But some of the most powerful images can come from taking the whole image down to one or two colours. In this case, of course, the effect is natural.

The Power of Three

Sets of three are very arresting in a frame.

RED!!

I love the painterly effect of getting close to flowers and keeping the aperture wide.

Viva La Grain!

Crunchy and grainy and nice. And you thought big grain was just for black and white...

Power Colour Pairs

Black and Red. Mmmm! A favourite colour combination.

Colour as The Subject

Sometimes a literal and recogniseable form is an unnecessary distraction if the real focus of your image is form and colour.

Trust Your Instinct

For the purposes of this post we will ignore the stains and streaks. Try to look through to the photo underneath. This has a beauty that is immediately apparent. I'm not quite sure what it is about this subject in this light.

Rather than try to reason it out, however, I made sure I took the photo.

Distracting Elements

One of the reasons why a lens with good "bokeh" is prized is its ability to smoothly throw the background into washes of pure colour. This can help you isolate subjects by focus when the background is distracting. However, as you can see here, it is essential that there is nothing else to distract the eye. In this case, improper processing has caused a multitude of flaws on the film which themselves provide a distraction.

Strong Colour Strong Picture

Lines and Details

Two things really make this happen for me. First, the hand lettering and small sign on the powerful drag car. Second, the sweep of the header exhausts which mirror the line in the pavement.

Get Closer

This is a real instant photo. And, no, the Fuji Instax 200 does not focus anywhere near this close. I simply held some closeup lenses in front of the camera lens. Yes, I had to experiment to get the right focus distance but sometimes you have to break a few eggs to get a decent picture.

Carpe Diem

This is a good example of smashandgrabphoto in action. I had no idea I would see the stadium like this until I was parking my car. Having a camera and tripod in the car allowed me to get this shot (these lights were only on for the football match which had just ended).

Graphical Elements

One important difference between seeing and a picture is that a picture has a definite border. You can harmonise with this border by having strong lines in your picture lead to or from corners of the frame. Lines can also focus attention within the frame.

The Importance of Colour

There is a nice graphical element here but the core of this photo is that YELLOW!

What Grabs You

Not sure why something attracts you? Can't make out why it works? So what! If it works, it works.

Of Things Seen And Unseen

This is one of a series that I would count as amongst my first successful film studio shots of Lise's cooking. I find I need a LOT more exposure for negative film than digital at the same ISO. Must be due to the greater latitude. Anyway, I think one of the successful things about this picture is the contrast between what is crisp and clear and what is soft and diffuse.

Smash and Grab

Evening light. Red traffic light. Digger.

Providence

Never underestimate the importance of factors beyond your control. You can click on the picture to read the story behind this image. However, fortune does favour the prepared mind.

How Much Do You Need?

How much do you need to take a photograph? More than one railing and one sunset?

Flare And Other Faults

Every so-called camera fault is actually a decision. Older lenses tended to focus on smooth transitions and contrast improvement (contrast was difficult to achieve before lens coatings became common). The lenses were judged on the photos produced. Newer designs are increasingly focussed on sharpness. First central sharpness and now corner sharpness. There is no perfect lens. Typically, a concentration on one area leads to a compromise in another.

The lens on this old camera is not coated. It suffers from flare much more than any modern lens. Flare exhibits itself not just in the coloured blobs we are familiar with but also in a general lowering of contrast as well as some overall colour casts. This could be described as a flaw. On the other hand, an image like this would be impossible without it.

A Sense of Scale

Without the "Lesotho Taxi" this is half the picture. A friend remarked today as this scrolled by on my screensaver, "Wow! I wondered why you had a photo of a ditch. Then I saw the car!"

A Rose By Any Other Name...

This would have been nothing without flash. This would have been nothing with direct flash. It's the ceiling bounce that is giving the soft light that brings out the colour. Look at the soft shadows, this is the giveaway. A good photograph is all about light.

Scale and Timing

Two things I'd like to point out in this photo.

The scale of the mountain is clear from the house in the middle distance. This sort of inclusion helps the viewer gauge the relative sizes of things. If people are in the photograph then that works well also.

The timing. Evening and morning light can be very rich in colour and really light up the side of a rock face.

Soft Light

This is a picture I took for my wife's business. The key to this soft light is diffusing the light. I used two flashes. One was shot through a homemade softbox held close. The other was bounced off some large white reflectors. Last of all I ran the exposure quite hot so that the whites became true white.

Negative Space

Generally, you don't want a large part of your picture to be all white or all black. Generally.

Sometimes, however, all that black can help convey context. For example, the darkness inside this primitive windowless hut.

Star Trails

This was taken in South Africa on a very dark and moonless night. The extreme length of the exposure has made streaks out of the stars. The extremely dim light on the mountain looks very bright which is also because of the extremely long exposure.

The key obstacles to a shot like this are having the camera stationary (a solid tripod is essential) and timing the exposure. Very few cameras will time extremely long exposures like this so you may be left hanging out with a cable release and a stopwatch. A few older cameras like the Nikon FE will time such exposures automatically. Generally, what you will need is a camera new enough to have automatic exposure but old enough that the circuitry is analogue not digital. Even on the FE Nikon only rate it capable of, IIRC, 10 second exposures. However, there is no hard limit (because it is not digital) and so it will actually run as long as it needs to. This exposure was probably close to twenty minutes.

Make The Most Of It

View blocked? See if you can use the foreground to your advantage.

It's In The Eyes

It may be a cliché, but if you get only one thing in focus make it the eyes. This is from the same wildlife park. It was a cub of a few months old. We were very fortunate to be allowed to actually enter the enclosure and sit amongst and play with the cubs.

Invisible Fences

One of the problems of pictures of animals behind fences is that they look a lot less exciting than, say, a Lion with a bloody mouth licking his lips as he advances towards you.

The key (assuming the fence has a lot of openings -- like a chain link fence) is to be as close as possible to the fence and have the animal as far from it as possible. If you then use a telephoto (you will have to to have the animal far off) and a wide open aperture you should be able to blur that fence to invisibility.

Keep Shooting

I really try to make each picture count when I'm shooting film. However, some subjects are hard or impossible to predict. Into this category fall ocean waves.

These waves were coming in strong and the headwind was lashing back the spray. I took nearly two rolls to get this shot which captures that feeling.

Ultrawides in Landscape Photography

Here is a photo taken from the same mountain top within minutes of the other. Here the story is about being up there and the view.

Ultrawides need careful treatment. The lens I used here is 15mm (same as 10mm on a crop sensor or "DX" camera). It sees an extremely wide view without distortion.

Here I have included the path that I am standing on. You can "walk" this path all the way to the end and you can explore the horizon all around. You can also see that I left some very close items to frame the distant ones.

Telephotos in Landscape Photography

This peak looks even more impressive now that it fills the frame. To do this took 400mm. I achieved this with a 200mm lens and a 2x teleconverter. Such a combo is perfect for things (like mountains) that hold still.

Focal Point

It is clear that the young tree and the two boulders are the focal point. Why?

Look Down

So often there is something worth seeing at your feet. These were some leaves that had spent the winter beneath an icy mountain stream.

What Did It Feel Like?

Was the sun in your eyes? Was it blinding you? Then why are you showing me a dark photograph? The lens flare helps communicate this also. Unfortunately, most lenses try to minimise flare. This is an older lens.

Backlighting

Look at the shadows on the cars. Look at the centres of the bushes. The sun is above and in front of me in this picture. It is partially shining through the petals of the flowers. That is what is making this scene explode with colour.

Unusual Light

Outdoor photography is all about the light. If the light is right it is hard to take a bad photo. But you must see it.

This was taken through the front windscreen whilst driving with a fifty year old camera. The light makes the photo.

I'm Looking At You

People and animals that look straight into the lens will be looking straight at the viewer. This can be powerful.

Distance Cues

In real life we have 3D vision.

In pictures we need things in the picture to cue us in on the distance and scale.

Distant vistas look more distant if there is something near in the foreground like these boulders. The grader in the middle distance gives a sense of scale because it is something we know the size of.

Tell A Story

This is from our trip up the Sani Pass in South Africa.

1 2 3 Number II

Here the key is that the three hillsides are different from each other. In the flower picture is was the similarity which tied them together. In both it is the diagonal and nearly equal arrangement which unites them.

1 2 3 Number I

Threes are powerful. This photo is stronger because of the three flowers across the diagonal.

Perfect Weather

Dull. Grey. Overcast. Perfect weather for photography!

An intricate and weathered subject like this would be hard to properly show in strong sunlight. The big "softbox" of the overcast sky has filled in the shadows and brought a slightly surreal dreaminess to the scene and sbject.

Wandering Eyes

When we see something in real life our eyes wander around the scene. In a photograph we present just a part of a scene. Try not to frustrate the viewer's eyes.

In this picture you can start with the valley in the lower right and follow it up until it is out of sight. The line of mountains at the top points to the upper right corner. This is visually satisfying. Rocks and other recogniseable things that are chopped in half can be visually frustrating. Also, any logical "V" shaped lines that have their apex cut off.

As with all such advise, let your wandering eyes be the judge.

P.S. The picture was distorted when I first posted this. Now fixed.

Namaqualand Colour Riot II

Here some uncolourful piles of bricks lend contrast.

Black Is White

What colour is a tyre? Free yourself from convention. Feel the sunshine.

Namaqualand Colour Riot

To bring out the riot of colour which was the main subject I let most of the field of view blur with a large aperture. To give context I left a line of flowers in sharp focus for contrast. To further accentuate this zone I picked a place where some flowers were standing up slightly higher.

These are artistic judgements which have to be made at capture time. Photoshop cannot fix any of these things later.

Share A Dream

The key here was seeing the light and the scene and using a large aperture. Learning to see a scene as the lens will render it is something that can only come from experience so keep shooting and remember what you did for each picture.