Photo advice
Techniques that can be used to create a more artistic feel and make your photographs stand out from the crowd
Make your photographs stand out from the crowd
In my last article, I shared some of my personal photographic journey with you and provided a bit of an insight as to how my approach has changed and developed over the years, allowing a much more artistic style to begin flourishing.
Before I start getting into the nitty-gritty of this article, perhaps it is worth mentioning how important other people’s work has become in the shaping and development of my own photographic techniques and style. There are some truly outstanding wildlife photographers out there, many of whom are in a league of their own, pushing serious photographic and artistic boundaries with some compelling and clever work.
Seeing what they are creating and the photographic benchmark they set is certainly humbling, but these photographic Da Vincis are no different from anyone else – in the main they are using equipment and are photographing subjects accessible to most of us. It’s their vision for an image and the way they approach their art which makes the difference.
Looking at inspirational work from others plays a major role in how I look at things as a photographer. For me, it’s no good taking the same old images year after year, I have to look at new ways to approach things and other people can be a good source of ideas and inspiration. Being involved in organising photographic competitions has exposed me to a plethora of photographic talent and jaw-dropping imagery. These masters of the pixel have been part of my continuing photographic apprenticeship, and certainly sparked an ongoing metamorphosis in my own style.
As I mentioned last month, photography is recording the light and not the subject itself. The way you record the light defines the resulting image; a skilled photographer will use this knowledge to capture the light in a variety of ways to create the image he or she wishes the viewer to experience. Let’s look at some of the techniques and their application.
Broken rules
One of the first rules of photography is that there has never been one that wasn’t meant to be broken. Tradition says that to take a good photograph the sun should be behind the photographer and lighting the subject evenly. I’d agree with this approach if the intention were to capture an image that showed all the features of the subject, the sort of thing I’d use in an identification guide – my image of a Robin from the first article perhaps. As nice as these images can be, they often don’t have the drama that can be created if the opposite approach were taken and the photographer chose to take the photograph into the light.
Changing the approach in this way often results in a more technically challenging prospect for the photographer, but it does open up a number of creative possibilities. This is achieved by positioning the subject against the light in varying ways and controlling the amount of light the photographer wants the camera to record. Rim lighting, silhouettes and the introduction of elements such as specular highlights (known as bokeh) can all be used to create a different and perhaps more compelling image than our traditional portrait photographed with the sun positioned behind the photographer. The following images are examples of the application of these techniques.
Perhaps my personal favourite is bokeh. It adds a dream-like quality to many images that seem to come alive when it works well – a bit like the way that adding fairy
lights transforms a Christmas tree. This is an element which is much prized by artistic photographers and it is created by light shining through small, concentrated points.
The sun shining through dew droplets on a damp summer morning is a particular favourite, the light coming through the tree canopy is another, the sun reflecting off wet pebbles on the beach is also a good example, or the twinkling electric streetlights at dusk.
These highlight points can only be achieved by pointing the camera lens towards the source of light, and they should be positioned a long way out of the focal plane; in other words, very out of focus! A long lens and a wide-open aperture help to narrow the field of focus and create this effect more readily.
Another effective trick also involves the use of a long focal length lens and an open aperture to create a shallow depth of field. Isolating a subject in the frame draws the viewers’ attention to it immediately; too many distracting elements can dilute the image’s impact. By utilising out of focus elements such as foliage and shingle banks can result in the subject being the only part of the photograph in focus. Added bonuses can come in the form of my favourite bokeh elements if the light is positioned correctly, too, or interesting shapes and shadows. Above are examples of a good use of this technique.
Shutter speed
A sense of drama can also be created by controlling shutter speed to introduce an element of blur to convey motion. Most wildlife subjects don’t stay still for too long and sometimes portraying that movement can transform an image from simply recording a frozen point in time to a living, moving, dynamic animal on the page or screen.
These images are achieved by altering the shutter speed of the camera, so it creates a balance between retaining sufficient sharpness and definition on the subject, while introducing enough blur to mimic the effect of movement. It’s a difficult skill to master, particularly when the photographer can also employ other techniques, such as camera panning, to create different effects. But that really is a whole article in itself.
Most of these blur/motion image attempts simply don’t work. Even with experience, it is tricky to dial in the correct shutter speed for every situation. Things move at different speeds, in different ways, and will be at varying distances from the photographer, who’ll be using lenses of differing focal lengths. But one of the joys of digital photography is that there’s no cost to the experimentational element.
If it doesn’t work, hit delete and try again. Eventually, there’ll be what we call in the trade a ‘keeper’, and that could be a very impactful image, indeed.
What I’ve attempted to illustrate is that creating great images is not simply a factor of the equipment at the photographers’ disposal. It is a complex combination of knowledge of the photographic subject, the understanding of light, and the ability to control what the camera records and the way it records it, that are the essential ingredients.
In a future article, I’ll explore the role photography plays in delivering a conservation message.