Victorian Wallpaper (Two Photographs)
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I took these shots not really thinking about the outcome. My interest was in testing my camera after not having used it for awhile. But I love this pseudo Victorian wallpaper look. I did it in colour and black and white because the shot works both ways.
The Imperfections of Fall (Two Photographs)
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Photographers love fall colours and we like to shoot them at their best. Yet fall is also about the fading of colours. And that too can make for interesting images even as the colour drains from the foliage.
Colour (Two Photographs)
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The more photography you do, the more you learn how arbitrary colour reproduction is. The camera, and editing and printing software all add colour profiles; sometimes it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not. A proper white balance helps, but it’s just a start and often the brightness, and saturation of other elements of our photos need to be “corrected” to get realistic colour. My advice would be that the photographer should be the judge of what is right, it is their product after all.
Flower Photography (Part Two)
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You may have seen these shots earlier this week in colour. I know of few photographers that do floral work in black and white. It certainly is one of the more interesting approaches to flower photography.
Flora in the Concrete Jungle (Two Photographs)
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On a walk that led me into a kind of industrial park, I found this bit of nature. I thought it would look good as a black and white photograph, but it turns out the colour, after a little work, was not so bad either.
A Break in the Fence (Two Photographs)
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I am still undecided if I prefer to work in colour or black and white. But this photograph which works both ways, in my view was a more powerful image in black and white. Often black and white expresses sentiment better than colour photography does.
A Monet Background (Two Photographs)
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If you ever get the chance to see Monet’s Lilies (a painting that is semicircular and covers many meters of wall you will know what I mean by a Monet background.) An impressionist, he looked down from a bridge and what he saw was cacophony of colour both organized and unorganized. The paintings capture your imagination. In my work I look for backgrounds that have that touch of colourful play.
Simple (Two Photographs)
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They say that sometimes simple is best. And in these uncertain times simplicity and clarity would be a godsend. In photography it’s not always easy to get that artistic background that makes this kind of photograph work.
Natural Abstraction (Two Photographs)
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This flower struck me as quite unique and I did my best to capture what I saw. In circumstances like this its not always clear others will have the same appreciation. That is one of the risks of the photographic art.
Down But Not Out (Two Photographs)
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Fall is full of colour and there is a new randomness to nature. Leaves fall, trees get more colourful with increasing moisture and the wind mixes it all up. Abstract art by nature. It’s very much like intimate urban landscape photography, you have to keep your eye out for the details, the light and colour.
Shades of Green (Two Photographs)
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Creative use of depth of field, even in broad daylight, can help create sufficient shades of similar colours to enable good backgrounds and interesting shots (at least in my experience). Try taking colourful outdoor photos at different apertures and ISOs and see if there is a change in the density of colour, there is a difference with some cameras.
Evil Green (Two Photographs)
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Green is often the nemesis of the nature photographer. You might see a bird and it looks wonderful but when you look at the photo at home there is green caste to the photo. While it’s usually possible to remove, it’s never as easy as one would like (e.g. a white balance fix is not enough and you need to isolate the green with any number of processing tools to remove it).
A Creative Twist (Two Photographs)
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The first thing I learned about taking photographs was to take several photographs, one in a normal fashion and the others with a twist. Now years later, when I see something interesting I look for a perspective with a twist, it works more often than not.
Bad Advice on Flower Photography (Three Photographs)
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I stopped reading a book on photography tips when they said never take a photograph of flowers looking straight down. What rubbish. I say do what you think works best. It seems everyone has opinions but I like a more positive approach to advice.
A Lesson Oft Forget (Two Photographs)
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Using aperture to isolate a subject is the oldest trick in the book. Small aperture, with subject closer to the camera than the background, works every time. But the quality of that background, the amount of defocusing, blurring etc. is dependant on the size of the Fstop we choose to use. Would the shot be better at F5.6 than F2.8? Looking at the back of the camera or through the EVF of a mirrorless camera doesn’t always help. Back home in front the computer there are only a limited number of things you can do to optimize the background. I often take numerous photos at different depths of field and I am often surprised what I find to have been the best aperture.
Mauve,Green and Purple (Two Photographs)
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There is a time of year when backgrounds are easy and clean and the flowers are at their best, it’s a time I take advantage of. I like to walk around finding a good position to get the flower just right and with the F stop maximize the background’s blur.
Flamboyant (Two Photographs)
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Flamboyant like a dancer, French gothic or a statue on the high street. It was the mixture of shadows and highlights that made the leafy water plant stand out for me. Nature has a way with shape and form, and the lighting made this stand out.
Changes (Two Photographs)
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Since I took up photography a long time ago, the biggest changes have occurred in how we process photographs, and there is more to come. Certainly we have seen changes in photography (digital), but the basics have remained the same. But processing has been undergoing revolutionary changes over the past 15 years and changed many photographers approach to photography, New photographers have to learn about their cameras, photography technique and editing/processing, it’s quite a process these days. Post processing has given us much more flexibility to make sure the results have our individual fingerprints on them.
Vignetting, Framing and Blurring (Two Photographs)
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It is often helpful to point your audience’s eyes on the subject using some post-processing techniques, e.g. by vignetting (darkening the area around the subject), framing your subject, or as in this case blurring some of the background. Some of the oldest and most useful tools to make your photos stand out.
Legerdemain (Two Photographs)
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I prefer the term legerdemain to “taking liberties” in editing. In most of my work things stay pretty much as I saw them, though sometimes an idea to enhance or alter reality comes into play; some of the many software tricks of modern processing seem like magic. In this case the faded pastels, and starker then real bouquet.
Surreal (Two Photographs)
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Sometimes I can envisage a final processed product, that is slightly different from the original captured image. The black and white, which I have worked with, has a certain surreal air to it because the balance between light and dark is accentuated.
Math and Chaos (Two Photographs)
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There is a certain repetitive pattern in the subject flower though it is surrounded by a chaos of similar flowers in decay with much less distinguishable pattern. Put another way – fractals, patterns and a sort of natural entropy.
HDR (Two Photographs)
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Today, HDR is easy with many software options available. The days of over the top HDR are not over, that option still exists, but it is much easier to do natural HDR photos like this from five separate exposures. Worth looking into as many more cameras have the necessary bracketing features.
Heads or Tails (Two Photographs)
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Let’s face it, nature photography is a bit of a game. You never know what you will see or if you will see something or that your shots will turn out just the way you want them to. Time is always of the essence, everything is transient.
