Creating Context In Your Pictures

While there are times when having nothing but your subject in your frame makes for extremely powerful pictures, you can add depth and meaning to your portraits by drawing on one additional element - Context.

In the example above, you see only the subject, and that too just partially. This is great if you're simply looking to bring out detail and nothing else.

But this composition doesn't give a sense of the setting - you're not really capturing the 'where' of this moment.

Showing more of your subject plus revealing additional location-details starts to 'place' your photograph better, as you see below.

And as you move around your subject,  using a combination of wide-angle lenses (24-70mm or 16-35mm)  and high/low framing, you can start seeing different foreground and background elements that can come into play, to support your picture.

By choosing the most relevant foreground and background elements, you can then create the best context in your pictures.

Happy Photographing!

Showing Scale In Your Pictures

The tallest mountain-peak you've ever set your eyes on; the shortest bonsai-tree you've ever gotten your hands around - just by themselves, it is very difficult, to convey, in a photograph, what makes them stand-out: their Scale.

To accentuate anything that's extraordinarily different in your subject - its largeness, smallness, or vastness, you can place a counter-point that's the opposite of your subject's scale, in your frame.

And if you can bring in a human element to make this contrast, that's even better!

With this type of juxtaposition, you can underscore your subject's impact quite effectively.

Happy Photographing!!

It takes two...

The best things in life come in a pair.

And so it is with colors.

Yellow and Blue. Magenta and Green. Cyan and Red.

Together, they can make your pictures pop with the splash of dual-hues.

And when your palette-choice, for your portrait, is any color and Black, be prepared to be surprised by how your hand-picked pair puts on a show!

Happy Photographing!!

Experimenting With Shutter-Speed

While what you see with your eyes almost always reveals all the detail you wish to capture in your picture, there are occasions when what your camera sees has so much more of the moment.

The milky-blur of a flowing creek; the golden-sway of a field of corn; the rainbow-splash of a Ferris wheel - these are the life-slices made just for your camera's magic-eye.

And Shutter-Speed is how you make an imprint of this sliver of motion.

So, the next time you run into such movement, and you're inspired to coax it into your photograph, simply set your shooting-mode to Tv (Time-Value), bump up your Shutter-Speed, keep clicking, and watch your camera's spectacular take of the subject!

Happy Photographing!!

Having fun with HDR photography

For years I'd seen 'painting'-like pictures, with colors seeping through the frame, with detail in the light and dark parts of the photos, and I'd always wondered 'How, how, HOW is it possible for a camera to capture all that vividness, so much contrast, exactly as our eye would see it, so perfectly, digitally?'

The answer, it turns out, is right there at our fingertips, in a fantastic but often overlooked camera-feature : HDR.

High Dynamic Range.

HDR is the magic-trick that combines three different clicks, of the same scene, taken in a short burst - each at a different exposure-level (low, normal, high), and then merging the best portions of those three images into a final, 'seen-through-the-eye'-like portrait.

And the amazing part - we each have our own personal magician prepared to dazzle us with this HDR wizardy - our camera.

Happy 'HDR' Photographing!!

And 'A Happy, Happy New Year!!!'

Becoming Best-Friends With Black

Black can be the most beautiful of colors you can photograph.

Black is also your single biggest roadblock to getting the right exposure in your picture.

A black-dress on your subject, the blackness of night, nothing but black in your frame - each is guaranteed to freak out your camera's light-meter - 'too dark! make bright!!' it screams. And then it promptly over-exposes your photo, attempting to bump-up the overall tone of your photo to gray.

This is because camera light-meters are built to reliably do just that : expose every time to get a gray tone. Too much black in your frame, and they overexpose; too much white in your frame, and they underexpose - all so that they eventually end up with gray.

So 'bye-bye' to all-black photos?

'Not so fast Light-Meter!' you can say, after you set your shooting-mode to the magical 'M' (Manual) marker.

And now you can take the gray-tone business completely out of the game. Here you tell your camera to use your dialed in aperture (f-stop) and shutter-speed, and you record on the sensor exactly what you see with your eyes, without any exposure-adjustments by the light-meter.

Then you watch as your camera obeys your command and brings into your snaps, that incomparable of colors - Black!

Happy Photographing!!

How Color Can Meld Different Elements Of Your Picture

Foreground. Background. Subject.

The three planes in a photograph - multiple elements in each; many color-palettes on each.

Your very first take-in of a scene usually gives you a mix of colors across these three planes - some contrasting, a few complementing, others jarring.

Very rarely is this first-look the best to create a unifying 'color-character' in your composition.

But as you try a combination of the incredible options in controlling the pieces that make up your frame : changing your focal-length, taking a high or low or angled view-point, or simply moving around your subject to completely alter the scenery itself, you will find that perfect framing which fuses concept with a strong color-dynamic.

You'd then have a powerful color-contrast (blue-red, yellow-purple, green-orange make wonderful contrasts) or color-harmony, or both.

Either way, you'd have used color to meld different elements of your picture!

Happy Photographing!!

Landscape Or Portrait?

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After you pick up your camera and before you push the shutter-button, you have two choices on the type of picture you can take:

1. Landscape:

This gives you a 'wide' field-of-view. Here you hold the camera in its regular horizontal-position - great to include more of what you see, on both sides of your subject.

        2. Portrait:

This gets you a 'tall' field-of-view. You turn the camera to a vertical-position - it allows you to exclude distracting details on either side of your subject. 'Portrait' and people go perfectly with each other!

In the photo above, I wanted to emphasize the 'tall' lines of the pillars. I was also looking to exclude details on the sides of the pillars. And so I went with 'Portrait' style for this snap.

The same place photographed in 'Landscape' format would give a completely different, vista-like character to the shot.

Landscape or Portrait, here's to you capturing wonderful moments, the next time you're out shooting!

Happy Photographing !!

Should You Process Your Photos?

You've set the best shooting-mode for the occasion; you've got the right f-stop for the subject; you see the light-meter showing a correct exposure - you click.

Perfect shot, right?

Not necessarily.

The technology you hold in your hand, when working with your DSLR, is nothing short of magic :  shutter opening-closing in a micro-second; photons impinging on sensor; millions of pixels firing -  image appearing on-screen!

Miraculous as this may be, it still cannot match the magnificence of The Ultimate Seeing Machine - The Human Eye.

There is no machine out there that can compete with how clearly, accurately, and quickly, the eye renders light, color, and texture. Our eyes see and show us things exactly as they are.

Which is why you always want to process your photos.

Starting with your great shot, bumping up the contrast-levels gets you clearer outlines, adjusting color-saturation gives you a richer palette, and increasing brightness brings in that bit of sun, that you saw, but your camera didn't.

And before you know it, you're holding the moment - just the way you happened to have seen it!

Happy Photographing!!

You Only Live THRICE!

• Once, when you're fully in the moment : 
  •  framing the photo, going by your first-impressions
• Twice, when you see further into the many-meanings of the moment :
  •  trying different points-of-view
• Thrice, when you find the one, true essence of the moment :
  • picking the picture and pushing it to its peak, in post-processing

So, as you wake to the welcoming wonder of the dawn-sky, and as you walk under the violet-tinge of twilight's bright - your eye looking through your camera's view-finder, your finger on the shutter-button, know that every click is cause to live - not once, not twice, but thrice-over!

Happy Photographing!