Even in a snapshot, you want to;
If you do all that, your pictures will be better than Uncle Fred’s.
Nope – not for the stock market. I know little about it, and I suspect hat is because there is little to know (it is mainly randomness). No, I am talking about stock photography. What makes a successful stock picture?
You can define this in many ways, but I like the following way of explaining the needs of a good stock picture that feature a person. You know the type of image: happy business people shaking hands, happy business people smiling, that sort of thing.
Those images consist of four elements:
That goes for stock photos, but it also goes for many other photos.
An exercise I recommend: run your recent photos of people by those rules, and ask yourself “how do they measure up? What is my background? What is my person doing? What is the symbol? What is the involvement of the person with the rest of the image? What could I have done differently, even better?” Frameworks like the list above help you do this in a repeatable way.
Are always good. And surprises. And reflections. And “filling the frame”.
Or all four, like in this picture from Nov. 2, which although it doesn’t work very well at small size, does illustrate the point. Do you like the CN Tower’s reflection?
Juxtapositions can be opposing colour. Or old/new. Ugly/beautiful.Large/small. Funny/serious. Curved/straight. Liberal/conservative. Traditional/modern. Fast/slow. Soft/hard. You get the picture.
Always carry your camera. This was a snap, taken handheld with the Canon 7D. From the car. Another example, of a similar subject:
Old/new immediately occurred to me.
-13C outside. Not a day for outdoors pictures. Back to watching TV and making an inventory of my memory cards.
It is easy enough to think “there is no interest here”, “I need to be in Tahiti to take nice pictures”.
Not so. You can take nice pictures everywhere, even of boring things around the house.
Think long lens, or think Macro (in Nikon terms, “Micro”) lens, perhaps. But open your eyes, get close and fill the frame, and have fun.
Home is where you live and what you do. Twenty years from now you will look at the pictures and remember with a smile.
As a photographer you should always remember that today is tomorrow’s “those were the days”.
One thing that snappers often ask me is “when do you turn your images”?
There is no one answer, but it is almost certainly “more often than you do”. I turn my picture diagonally when:
Here’s a few recent examples:
So while for the sake of your viewers’ stomachs I would not recommend you turn for every picture, I do think we could all do this a lot more than we do today. For that professional look.. or just to get everything into the picture. Which still gives it that professional look.
When composing a picture, our proverbial Uncle Fred puts every subject in every picture smack bang in the middle.
Sometimes that works. But usually it leads to an unbalanced composition.
Like a scale with a pivot, I like to think as pictures needing the weight balanced. That leads more to this kind of thing (last week in Sedona, AZ):
The “Rule of Thirds” is one example of such a balanced layout. If you do not know this “rule” (which of course is only a guideline) then please look it up now. Or just click here. And you will conclude that of course I am using that rule in the photo above. I am also using colour contrasts and converging lines.
And all that in one hand from the steering seat of a Dodge Ram. You see, the point is that this is not a conscious decision. Good composition becomes second nature, an automatic reflex. With practice.
Here is another sample:
Another important thing is that any activity, motion, pointers, etc point into the middle. Not usually out of the frame.
Have fun shooting!
…I may well be on one of these:
A typical case of “fill the frame” composition. Remember Capa: “If your ictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”.
In any case, I am flying back to Toronto via Calgary today.
This recent studio portrait I did of Robert the Real Estate Agent (see http://www.lofthunting.ca) neatly illustrates something: the importance of orientation.
Here’s the shot straight up:
And here, tilted slightly to the left:
Much more dynamic! Tilting, even slightly, gives pictures a dynamic feel.
It seems almost too obvious, but one time you may want to consider going to black and white is… when you see strong blacks and whites. Like in this shot I made at a recent wedding:
Strong blacks, strong whites, nice greys, and an off-centre composition. That makes this shot, wouldn’t you say?
Assignment: shoot one photo in black and white today. You can shoot in B/W in your camera or do it in Lightroom/Photoshop/etc.
Steel-blue and yellow are opposite colours, so like many juxtapositions, this one works particularly well too. And when old and new, nature and man-made are mixed in, there might just be a picture there.
One lesson in this: always keep your camera on or near you. Another lesson: always keep your eyes open.