Filling in the Back Catalogue
Well, here we are again!
I doubt the posts will come this often all the time, but whilst the impetus is here then let's go for it!
I think I want to start the next step off on a cursory look at what I've tried up to now. From standard point and click photography through to some very basic editing of RAW photos. As with most things this has been an amusingly bumpy ride with some rather lucky good shots, and some rather calculated failures!
The first attempt at artistic photography was with my now-wife; we were out for a walk in the sunshine, her riding her horse and me on foot (four wheels over four legs if you ask me...).
In my humble opinion this photo was a good idea, sadly I took it at the complete wrong moment. I didn't know this at the time, I just looked through my eyes - which are very good at differentiating between light and dark - and thought "That'd make a nice photo".
In retrospect, looking back on this photo now I know that it needed a couple of things to turn it from a badly executed, but good idea, in to a potentially great photo.
Firstly, I could have made use of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. HDR blends under-exposed, over-exposed and 'normal' images together; this would have brightened the section in shadow and darkened the section that is too bright.
This photo was a few years ago, and taken on my phone, so HDR wasn't an option. The second option was to either take the photo sooner, or take it later. That way it would either all have been in the shade, or all in the sunlight.
Sometimes, however, the effect can be used to full effect in making a silhouette - or close to it. For example the cover photo of the website, or the picture to the right.
I could have tried HDR on this, but the silhouette adds something great to the image (or at least I think so!).
One uber-tip about exposure, especially if using a camera in 'auto' mode is to focus on the part of the image you want the camera to match the exposure to.
To demonstrate this I've taken 3 AMAZING photos of the same thing, with the focus on each point. I've circled the areas that I forced the camera to focus on and it has also taken the white balance from there too.
Image 1: I focussed on the darkest point on the image. Obviously it's made that dark corner perfectly lit, you can see all the details and it's generally good. The other areas of the image do tend to suffer - One interesting note is that my phone (Xperia Z5 Premium) decided to fire the flash as well as it was on auto. If you're going for any particular effects then you may want to disable the flash.
Image 2: This was the 'normal' version of the image, where the main focus of the image is selected as the area for auto-exposure. As you can see the dark corner that was focussed on previously is now too dark to make anything out, and the lamp above is quite bright. The flash didn't auto-fire on this one, which leaves an orangey light because of the white balange - more on this in a future post!
Image 3: Finally this image has the focus solidly on the lamp in the background. This doesn't really have the silhouette effect, but that is because the big lights in my kitchen were also on - if they weren't the apple would be a lovely silhouette :)
I'll bring this post to an end with one of my favourite uses of a bit of intended auto-exposure. It's a picture that was taken on my phone quite a few years ago, but the tree and the railing in the foreground are in perfect silhouette. One of the first rules of photography I ever heard was to take photos with the light behind the cameraperson, however a few experiments (both successful and not-so-much) tell me that it's not a hard and fast rule!
Here's to the next post!