06-10-2005, 11:55 AM
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#1
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First Line Centre
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Toronto, ON
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Due to Neeper's shots, I thought we could share in the essentials of photography & composition.
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06-10-2005, 12:18 PM
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#2
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Powerplay Quarterback
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Take pictures that are visually appealing to the eye. Things that look cool. Take em from different heights and angles (crouch, lie down on the ground etc). Minimalize the boring shots of your buddy posing for the camera with a beer in hand and instead wait until he is hurling up that beer on the girl next to him. Think of yourself as Spielberg and that you are creating interesting images for an audience.
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06-10-2005, 12:25 PM
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#3
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Is Foxy
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: England
Exp: 
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Lighting is important too...
When taking shots outdoors, the best time of day for light is an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset. The longer light rays make for a more mellow glow, longer shadows, and just a more natural appearance.
But, sometimes it just isn't feasible to be in the right place at those times for great photography.
Another suggestion is just be willing to go through a lot of film (if you're using an old fashioned manual 35 mm like I do). Like Dangler said, take different angles and such. You'd be surprised at how different something looks by taking a photo of it at an unconventional angle.
Just my two cents...
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06-10-2005, 01:52 PM
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#4
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Ben
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: God's Country (aka Cape Breton Island)
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if you're taking a shot of something big (let's say a baseball stadium) try and keep the street, parking lot, etc out of the shot.
You want a natural flow in the picture, not always possible, but you don't want your eye to wander all over the place, you want it to follow a pattern
__________________
"Calgary Flames is the best team in all the land" - My Brainwashed Son
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06-10-2005, 02:42 PM
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#5
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CP Pontiff
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: A pasture out by Millarville
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Quote:
Originally posted by dangler22@Jun 10 2005, 06:18 PM
Take pictures that are visually appealing to the eye. Things that look cool. Take em from different heights and angles (crouch, lie down on the ground etc). Minimalize the boring shots of your buddy posing for the camera with a beer in hand and instead wait until he is hurling up that beer on the girl next to him. Think of yourself as Spielberg and that you are creating interesting images for an audience.
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I agree . . . . use the things a camera can do, like using depth of field to isolate a subject against a background as an example.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1040857_edited-1.jpg
Freeze a subject while having the background in motion.
http://www.goldentales.ca/London4.jpg
Or have the foreground in motion, with the background stationary, like this picture of an English town passing through the trees, taken from a train.
http://www.goldentales.ca/London37.jpg
Have your picture suggest a story . . .
http://www.goldentales.ca/FamousKeepershot.jpg
Use lighting to create interest.
http://www.goldentales.ca/London54.jpg
And don't be shy about catching people in unusual situations:
http://www.goldentales.ca/London1.jpg
And get a digital so you can take thousands, allowing you to discard all but hundreds. . . . .
Just a few things.
Cowperson
__________________
Dear Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am. - Anonymous
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06-10-2005, 04:39 PM
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#6
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My face is a bum!
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Great post cowperson, I'd love to figure out how to do the first 2 with my camera if possible.
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06-10-2005, 06:46 PM
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#7
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CP Pontiff
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: A pasture out by Millarville
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Quote:
Originally posted by hulkrogan@Jun 10 2005, 10:39 PM
Great post cowperson, I'd love to figure out how to do the first 2 with my camera if possible.
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Okay . . . . since you asked you get the long-winded version . . . . you can probably do most of those with any reasonable camera.
Look at the first picture . . . . what are the elements that need to be accomplished?
1) Something has to be in focus. Obviously the head of the dog. 2) Something has to be out of focus. Obviously the house a half mile away. You also want to bring the house closer to make it a more obvious part of the background (if that's your intent).
3) Move a short distance away, about 7-10 feet back of the dog, zoom in and secure a good focus on its head. That in turn also brings the house closer but also renders it hopelessly out of focus. Voila. If you had used a wide angle view, you would get the dog in focus but push the house away, making it merely a dot, and it might be in focus in the distance as well.
An example of the opposite, where you endeavour to bring everything together but keep EVERYTHING in focus is at the next link below where you stand about 30-35 feet behind the cat, and zoom in to bring objects closer to the cat. The farm is half a mile away and the road on the other side of the valley and up the other side is exactly one mile away. In spite of the gulf of distance, pretty much everything is in focus, with the cat only marginally out of focus.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1000331_edited-13.jpg
In the second photo you asked about, the Horse Guard guys marching, you're "panning." The nearest line of marching Horse Guard are in focus and there is less arc to their movement as they pass by CLOSE in front of you versus the background which is successively further away. As you swing your camera to follow the first Horse Guard guy, ignoring everything else, the camera freezes him but each successive layer behind him has a greater arc and appears to have more motion as a result. You need a slower shutter speed.
Another example of an image where ALL action is frozen, with very little motion effect, indicating the importance of a slower shutter speed (this is a print image that was scanned):
http://www.goldentales.ca/sink3.jpg
In addition, the closer you are to the subject, the more the background should blur. The further away, as in this shot below of a running dog, the less feeling of motion you might see in the background. The shutter speed in this image is slow as it was with the Horse Guards, but the distance takes away some of the motion you see in the Horse Guard picture, which was taken from close up.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1020242_edited-1.jpg
A few other things:
Silhouetting against the sun for effect. One light source from behind the object. And you let your camera get its light reading from the sun, therefore making the dog darker and bringing out the frost on the window.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1030954_edited-2.jpg
. . . . and using flash against backlighting (although still kinda dark early in the day in this example). In this image, there is a light source in the background, the rising sun, and a light in the foreground, the flash. Don't be afraid to use flash in daylight to eliminate shadows.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1020783_edited-1.jpg
Hope that helps. Its not that complicated. Just perspective. Take lots of frames. I think I read somewhere a typical National Geographic photog takes 200 rolls of film for the 11-14 images that might make it into the magazine. Neeper took 2400 images on his European trip. I took about 600 on my London trip. With digital, there's not much expense to taking bad shots and getting rid of them later.
I'm sure others can help with more technical things.
Cowperson
__________________
Dear Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am. - Anonymous
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06-10-2005, 07:40 PM
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#8
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Official CP Photographer
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: PL15
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Wow, a thread motivated by me? I am blushing.
I am going to list off the easy beginner stuff of what to look for when taking a photo.
1. Composition is the biggest thing for me. You can make a dull subject look interesting with composition. Filling the frame is important! Make your subject fill the frame. You do not want a busy background.
my example: http://jtimagesonline.com/europe2005/DSC_3219.jpg
1b. Rule of thirds. Just using this rule will improve your photography big time. When you center your subject, your eyes go directly at the subject. And that's it. The eye does not "explore" anywhere else in the photos. By using rule of thirds and putting your subject off to the side, it will force the eye to explore the rest of the photo.
my example: http://jtimagesonline.com/landscape/DSC_2568.jpg
When taking photos with skys. I like to give it 2/3 sky to make it look big!!
ex: http://jtimagesonline.com/europe2005/frame...ntainebleu5.jpg
1c. When photographing a person, leave room for them to look into. Using the rule of thirds, allow the subject to look into the empty space in the frame and not out of the frame.
my example: http://jtimagesonline.com/people/DSC_2088x.jpg
2. Isolating subject using depth of field. You can control with manual cameras by controlling F stop. You do not want a busy background.
my example: http://jtimagesonline.com/europe2005/DSC_3463.jpg
3. Shutter speeds. Do you want to freeze your subject? Or give it a sense of motion? In this example, I slowed the shutter speed down to about 1 sec using a tripod. As you can see the water is blurred, letting the viewer know that the water is moving.
ex: http://jtimagesonline.com/landscape/DSC_2486x.jpg
4. Leading lines. I like the give the viewer something that the eyes can follow. Refer to this photo I took on nose hill. It really doesn't look all the interesting when you are there. But if you do it right, it can look cool. Notice how your eyes starting at the bottom of the trail and automatically followed it up to the end?? I also use the rule of thirds. Giving the hill 2/3 of the frame and leaving the sky 1/3.
my ex: http://jtimagesonline.com/landscape/DSC_2516.jpg
5. Repeating patterns. I really like looking for this when I can. You just have to find it.
my ex: http://jtimagesonline.com/europe2005.../stpetersq.jpg
When you look through the viewfinder, take time. Don't just press that button. Look at your scene. Is there anything you can do to make it look better? Take an extra 5 sec to compose the photo. You'll be amazed how your photo will instantly approve. Once you get better of taking photos, you will need skill on how to post process photos. Get out the Photoshop book and READ!!
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06-26-2005, 11:02 PM
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#10
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Silicon Valley
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Beautiful calf!
Great thread. I don't know much (aka. anything) about photograph, and usually just use my point and shoot, but I've been getting more into it since Neeper's Europe thread. Never realized the art in photography.
Heh, I thought my Europe pictures were godsend-beautiful, but with all this artistic photography talk... it makes it seem so bland now. :angry:
oh well 
__________________
"With a coach and a player, sometimes there's just so much respect there that it's boils over"
-Taylor Hall
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06-28-2005, 07:09 PM
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#11
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CP Pontiff
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: A pasture out by Millarville
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Hmmmm . . . . . ask yourself this: "Two, three or 10 years from now, would you go back and look at those pictures of rocks and streams with any kind of interest?"
If yes, why?
If no, why not?
And . . . . if 'no", then what element could you add to pictures of rocks and streams that would timestamp it and make it something of timeless interest to you, a long term memory that will bring you back time and time again to that particular spot and that particular day?
Cowperson
__________________
Dear Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am. - Anonymous
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06-28-2005, 07:19 PM
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#12
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Powerplay Quarterback
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I have absolutely nothing to add to this thread aside from the fact that I am thoroughly impressed by the pictures taken, and the depth of knowledge that some have. I guess it may only be magnified because I have absolutely no clue :huhsign:. I have learned something.
__________________
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06-28-2005, 08:09 PM
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#13
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Silicon Valley
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Hmmmm . . . . . ask yourself this: "Two, three or 10 years from now, would you go back and look at those pictures of rocks and streams with any kind of interest?"
If yes, why?
If no, why not?
And . . . . if 'no", then what element could you add to pictures of rocks and streams that would timestamp it and make it something of timeless interest to you, a long term memory that will bring you back time and time again to that particular spot and that particular day?
Cowperson [/b][/quote]
What would you suggest for the "no" ?
(Relate to personal story or made up one if you wish, I wouldn't know the difference.)
__________________
"With a coach and a player, sometimes there's just so much respect there that it's boils over"
-Taylor Hall
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06-28-2005, 08:27 PM
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#14
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First Line Centre
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Kalispell
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06-28-2005, 09:35 PM
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#15
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CP Pontiff
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: A pasture out by Millarville
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Quote:
Originally posted by Phanuthier+Jun 29 2005, 02:09 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Phanuthier @ Jun 29 2005, 02:09 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Quote:
Originally posted by Cowperson@Jun 29 2005, 01:09 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-calf
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Hmmmm . . . . . ask yourself this: "Two, three or 10 years from now, would you go back and look at those pictures of rocks and streams with any kind of interest?"
If yes, why?
If no, why not?
And . . . . if 'no", then what element could you add to pictures of rocks and streams that would timestamp it and make it something of timeless interest to you, a long term memory that will bring you back time and time again to that particular spot and that particular day?
Cowperson
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What would you suggest for the "no" ?
(Relate to personal story or made up one if you wish, I wouldn't know the difference.) [/b][/quote]
A long-winded response . . . . . and Neeper and others WILL have different perspectives on this which would be interesting to read. Take my thoughts for what they're worth to you.
If you're younger, three, five and ten years from now, you probably think you'll remember with fondness the day you shot the rocks and the streams.
If you're older, with desk drawers full of rock and stream photo's you rarely look at, you'll probably know better via the gift of hindsight and experience.
I'm assuming Calf was out hiking, probably with a buddy or a wife/girlfriend or his dog.
Thirty years from now, that mountain and that stream will be convincingly . . . . the same. Not much will have changed.
Thirty years from now the dog will be dead, the girlfriend/wife will have been long gone or changed dramatically and his buddy will have a pot belly so big he couldn't make it that high in the mountains anymore.
If it were me, and everyone has different tastes, I'd put people or some other living thing in the landscape, some connection to the time period.
Make the photo meaningful to you in a way that timestamps it and draws you back in a future year because there is something in it, some memory that you care about. A girlfriend/wife/friend walking along the the meadow on the right of the first picture. The person sitting on the rocks along the creek, gazing into the distance. Etc, etc . . .
Its still a shot of the landscape, but with a difference.
The "hook" in the photo can be intrusive, dominating the shot, or less intrusive as in these varied examples.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070067_edited-1.jpg
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1060751_edited-2.jpg
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070639_edited-1.jpg
Further, since you asked for stories, a couple of examples of how/why pictures stand the test of time, or can fade from memory . . . .
My wife's nephew went to Costa Rica surfing for a month and came back with six rolls of film . . . and not a single picture of himself in Costa Rica. All shots of the beautiful landscape/sea and very beautiful it was I'm sure . . . . . all the photo's no doubt filed in a drawer somewhere and forgotten. Ten years later would those landscapes have more of an impact if he had at least ONE of himself holding his board or coming in on a wave? He has NO memory showing HIM as a younger man on a grand adventure. I remember flipping through them at the time and thinking "Where the hell is this guy? Was he even there?" There's just something wrong with that.
As a 20 year-old, I rode my bicycle down through BC, Idaho and Montana and had lots of landscape shots too and while some remain interesting to me its really the photo's that include the people I met . . . . and those of myself as a scrawny kid with one of the few times I'd ever have a washboard stomach!! - that draw me in and put me back into the scene as I once lived it. I look at pictures like that and I remember the details of a particular day so long ago, hollowed, tired eyes reminding me of a hot, hot day cycling around Lake Cour d'Alene and the air thick with white, choking on volcano dust from Mount St. Helens.
My father took wonderful landscape shots of the mountains. . . . a bazillion of them as a matter of fact. Beautiful scenery . . . . but, one mountain looks the same as another after a couple hundred and even he didn't go back and look at them after a while. In clearing up his estate, I threw most of them away and kept the landscape shots with people in them, the one's with meaning to both himself and those he left behind. One particular shot of himself as a figure overlooking Sentinel Pass is on his tombstone.
I won't discourage straight landscape shots though. . . . . if I take a straight landscape shot I try to make it funky and visually different so that I'll want to come back and see it again.
Your equipment creates a mirage:
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1070170_edited-1.jpg
Early morning and early evening are grand times for strange colours.
http://www.goldentales.ca/P1010857_edited-3.jpg
And strange angles can create interest (this is a scanned image, not digital)
http://www.goldentales.ca/new2.jpg
Cowperson
__________________
Dear Lord, help me to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am. - Anonymous
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06-28-2005, 09:59 PM
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#16
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Official CP Photographer
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: PL15
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You asked for a critque... here's mine:
Mountain Landscape
This photo works. Use of triangles and angles are very powerful in a photo. You also have good balance with the mountains on each side. The exposure is dead on.
A creek
I think this photo is a little over exposed. It seems bright on my eyes. I think this shot would have worked better if you had a more interesting foreground, and maybe more creek to lead our eyes.
Another Creek
Here's where I agree with what Cow has said. What's so interesting about this shot? Maybe if you had a someone or something else to accompany the photo it would look better.
My personal favorite - the larger version looks way better
Ok, this one is a very nice picture. Well I should say it has a lot of potential. I'll give you the good first. Excellent foregorund with the dead log. The tree is on an angle, as previously stated is powerful. Same with the mountains. Seems nicely balanced. The dead tree also kind of frames the shot as well. Now the bad. The pic is under exposed and over exposed. What happened here was your camera light metered was kind of tricked. This shot is kind of tricky though. I would light metered the sky for one shot, then metered the landscape for a second, and see which one can be worked with. The sky as no detail because it seems blown (over exposed). But on the other hand the landscape is too dark. There is hardly any detail in your tree. You want to see more bark in it. It could also use a saturation boost. I would also clone out the leaves at the top of the frame. They are simply distracting and add nothing to the photo.
Some Mountain
Once again.. you need foreground interest to make it more interesting.
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06-28-2005, 10:00 PM
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#17
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Official CP Photographer
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: PL15
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Cow, your photos of your dog are splendid!! Seriously, they are awesome. I love everything about them. Good job.
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