YOUR PHOTO
A reflection in your photo can help to create a perfect picture. Like these three readers managed to achieve.
Knee deep...
When he gets the opportunity to take a picture in nature, he grabs it with both hands, says 15-yearold Hennie Steyn from Rayton in Gauteng. “We visited the Kruger National Park and one morning we took a drive to see if we could spot some game. At one stage we drove past a dam and saw a yellow-billed stork. It’s a beautiful bird to take a picture of, but the smooth water and the reflection of the bird immediately caught my eye. I don’t have my own camera, but I was in the car with Ben Arnoldi, also from Rayton. I borrowed his camera to take the picture.” The bird with its yellow beak really does catch the eye – and you don’t often see water this silky smooth. It was a windless day and there were only a few soft ripples on the surface. (It looks like the ripples are coming from the crocodile on the left in the background.) These ripples change the reflection of the bird in such a way that it almost looks like a modern painting. You can still see detail of the bird in the reflection without the image becoming too distorted. Hennie says he only saw the crocodile in the photo afterwards, and the poor bird is standing with its back to the guy with the big teeth… The crocodile, along with the branch in the foreground that’s out of focus, balances the photo in an odd way. The frame cuts through both – generally it’s not ideal because you rather want to see more in a photo, not less. And yet, these two elements lend valuable context about the environment. Without them you’re simply looking at a bird standing in water. For an even more striking image you can zoom in to just above the legs of the stork to get in the full reflection of the bird. It immediately gives the photo an artistic feel where you still see enough detail to know it’s a yellow-billed stork. Because you don’t immediately know what you’re looking at you look at the photo for longer while your brain figures out what’s going on.