Taking good photographs and pictures is partly about being in the right place at the right moment to capture the image. It doesn’t matter what kind of camera or equipment you have. If everything comes together at the right moment, the subject, lighting, and placement, you will walk away with a wonderful photograph.
However, that is what happens when you live in a perfect world. The rest of us have to work at creating wonderful photographs.
The key to a successful image is composition. How the subject is arranged within and against it’s background. It’s about eliminating distractions so the focus stays on the subject and not the details. It’s about placing the subject in a location that enhances it. It’s about understanding all the little details that go into taking a photograph, and making them work for you.
It is the Art of Composition.
I've been working as a photography judge, reviewer, critic, editor, and even helped teach others how to judge and review photographs, since I was in high school. While there are a lot of points to consider when judging and evaluating a photograph, they basically boil down to:
Composition
Light
Capturing a "moment"
Focus
Product Quality (film/reproduction quality)
These can be very [...]
Understanding lens perspective is critical to advanced photographic studies and skills. It is the skill of learning how the lens sees. For some, the concept of photography lens perspective is simple. The wider the lens the wider the view, the longer the lens the narrower the view. Yet, lens perspective is much more interesting and important to photographers.
Lens perspective impacts what is captured and "seen" on the film, the amount of foreground and background included, and the working distance between the photographer and the subject.
We examine lens magnification, working distance, and how lens see as part of this extensive article on lens perspective for nature photographers, helping photographers learn more about how a lens sees.
There is "something" about a door. Growing up in Washington State, it was a summer and winter ritual of ours to stop along the way, crossing over the mountains to Eastern Washington to visit friends and family, at The Alps. The Alps was owned by a German immigrant family and they offered a rest stop for fun, candy, and toys. Originally a small part of their home, it has now grown into quite the complex, but in those early days, it was a magical place for children.
Alongside the highway, the home hung over the embankment and down to the river below. We'd climb down the narrow stairs to the grassy yard alongside the river turned into a small park-like setting. There were chairs to rest upon and chairs swinging under trees. A small playground and sandbox was for the smaller children. And there, in the middle of it all near the river, stood a framed door. Just a door. Nothing special, just a simple wooden door. It was weathered and slightly bowed from years of exposure to the harsh Cascade Mountain weather, paint peeling slightly, and a handle waiting to be turned.
I could look around the door. I could see everything beyond the door. But the door itself begged to be opened and passed through. You are supposed to open doors and walk through them. My mother never told us we weren't supposed to walk through walls, but after a few experiments, you understand the logic of her lack of explanation. You understood clearly that to get beyond the wall, you had to use the door. Even though this door had no walls, the compulsion to use it was fierce. It "begged" to be used. It said, "Open me."
Our language often uses windows as a reference to openings and gateways. "Eyes are the windows of the soul." In reality, it is the doors that get you where you are going. Let's examine the art of photographing the door.
In part one of Background Magic, we looked at what makes a perfect background and what questions to ask yourself as you compose a photograph, and some of the typical techniques used to change, clean, or manipulate the background to improve it. In this section, we cover the specific background crimes committed by photographers when they ignore their backgrounds. These crimes include: distracting backgrounds, overwhelming backgrounds, lost in the background, and the crime of neglecting the foreground. We will also examine the impact of photographic flash on backgrounds and how to make your own artificial backgrounds. Background check!!
We are often so caught up in the excitement of photographing the subject, we often forget the single most important element that can make or break our photograph: the background. The background, and in its own way the foreground, can accentuate or completely distract from your subject. How many times have you gotten back vacation pictures and found a brilliant photo of your loved ones smiling and laughing with a tree branch growing out of their heads? All the attention is on their new set of antlers and not on the joy of the moment. Background can make all the difference in a successful photograph.
In our article on playing Sherlock Holmes, Photo Detective, we discussed many of the crimes committed by photographers to ruin photographs, and looked at some in-depth analysis of backgrounds in "Behind the Background Magic" in our Behind the Scenes section. Now, we take you even deeper into the background and study some photographic crimes committed by ignoring the importance of background.
In this two part series, we explore various background crimes such as distracting backgrounds, overwhelming backgrounds, lost in the background, and the crime of neglecting the foreground. We will also examine the impact of photographic flash on backgrounds and how to make your own artificial backgrounds. Before we get to the crimes in part two of this series on background magic, let's look at what makes a perfect background.
Want to know the number one thing you can do to improve the quality of your photography? We have the answer. It's easier than you can image and we recommend everyone do it. The discovery of this magic recipe for great photography was always known, but reinforced by a chance encounter with a bunch of excited tourists on Mt. Rainier. Their enthusiasm lead us to create our famous "Dot Animal Syndrome" and we have the cure for the disease.
"Oh, your pictures are so beautiful. Mine never look like that," exclaim many people when they see our images. "What kind of camera do you use?" Time and again we explain that it isn't the dummy camera that creates the beautiful pictures. It's the dummy behind the camera. Honestly, it isn't the film, it isn't the camera, it isn't the lens, and it isn't the location. It is the person with the finger on the trigger who captures the beautiful pictures. It is all about the photographic approach. When we approach a potential photograph, we come to the scene with years of experience that has been flavored by numerous photography classes and training programs. Teaching nature photography, we notice that beginning students are so taxed with all the information they have to consider before they press the shutter, just taking the picture overwhelms them. In time, they, too, come to understand that they have to approach photography in a step-by-step process, initiated at each location, and reinitiated upon each repositioning within the location.
Since there are so many combinations which give a "correct" exposure, how do you decide which one is best for you? This is part of the creative decision, a decision that distinctly changes your photographs. When it comes to determining the right exposure for backgrounds, foregrounds, and the amount of depth in your image that remains in or out of focus, things get a little more complicated. Determining depth of field is often guesswork, but we're here to help you get the guesswork out of calculating depth of field, adding this creative skill to your photographic composition abilities.
