Just a quick photo today—I’ll continue the account of my trip tomorrow. Ice and snow on Abraham Lake.
For the record, I’ve never heard of an X composition, and intuitively it doesn’t seen like it would work to me. But for some reason I like this photo.
Ice and frost near the Bow River in Banff.
With a design background, I tend to be very line conscious in my compositions. Visual weight, positive and negative space, leading lines, rhythm – these are my photographic language. I like clear focus and simplicity. But sometimes it’s interesting to try another language. Every once in a while I’ve taken photos that come from a different place. They bypass my need for clear focus and, while still often being recognizable, are a mess of line and color almost in the vein of abstract impressionism. Here are a few that I think have worked over the last couple of years.
Often sunrises and sunsets are the best light. This light is more unusual, so it adds interest to a scene, as long as the light is not competing with other elements of your composition. I often feel like sunrises or sunsets are bandages though – something to fix an otherwise boring scene. So if you’re taking a photo of a sunrise or sunset, make sure you consider the composition as well, and what makes the foreground interesting.
Taken at sunset in Cooking Lake Rec Area last summer.
People often say that direct sunlight in the middle of the day is not acceptable light for landscapes. There’s a small bit of truth to that, but don’t let that stop you from taking awesome pictures. When the light is contrasty, look for things to shoot that look good with that amount of contrast, or things that create interesting shadows. When there are clouds, look at the shapes of the clouds and look at the subtle details brought out by the soft light. All light (and lack of light) is good to shoot in, you just have to look at things differently and be aware of the light.
I’m not the guy who waits for 8 hours for the right light for a scene picked out days in advance. I’m too impatient and there’s too much to see. In that 8 hours I would have missed twenty different compositions that were perfect for the light at the time. Don’t get me wrong, being at the right place at the right time is a beautiful thing. I’m just not often willing to sacrifice a day of exploring for one good photo. Maybe someday I’ll grow up and calm down.
Shot in Whiteshell Provincial Park, Manitoba at 1:45 in the afternoon.
In the interests of geographical diversity, today’s photo is from Morden, MB. I went for a great hike with my family around Lake Minnewasta this past summer. For those who have not been here, the park is very nice for people who like the resorty villages, but the trail is absolutely beautiful. These are harebells (Campanula rotundifolia — as opposed to the hairy flowers like this which are bluebells) against a lichen covered tree trunk.
As I was getting this photo ready for the post today I kept having problems. I like the photo – the complimentary purple and orange, the contrasting textures, the brightness of the flowers. But something didn’t feel quite right. I kept on going back and trying to edit it differently. I think I finally figured out my problem with it, which can’t be fixed with processing – there’s no clear focal point. The eye has so many places to go, but there’s no clear line to follow, no one point to rest at. I was going to scrap the whole post and start again, but I thought you might be interested in my thoughts and processes on how I reject photos I’ve taken.
And now, in the interests of posting a photo I’m actually happy with, here’s one from the same hike.
Shots of the moon are hard to get. With a wide angle lens, the moon is a dot in the sky. With a telephoto, you have to make sure your exposure is short enough – the moon actually moves pretty fast. While keeping your exposure short, you still want enough depth of field to keep some detail in the foreground. If the moon is exposed correctly, everything else is too dark, and if everything else is exposed correctly, the moon is completely blown out (although both of these can look good). And then you have the whole chromatic aberration problem unless you have an amazingly expensive lens, because the scene is so high contrast. So I’ve never shown these before. These are not the sharpest photos in the world – I didn’t have the highest quality telephoto lens at the time. But I’m pretty happy with them too. They have a great feeling to them. This was at Cooking Lake Natural Area last year the night of the harvest moon.
Back from Camrose with a minimalist photo for you. Keeping almost everything outside of the frame of the photo puts much more emphasis on what is there – the tones, the quality of line. And in photography especially it is difficult to keep a composition simple. It is easy for little things to sneak in – the world is a busy and complicated place. It can be a sort of zen exercise to focus on a simple subject and to remove everything else.
This is the Saskatchewan River last winter.
Composition and inspiration are, in my opinion, the core of art photography. Working part time in a camera store, it is easy to get caught up in technical details and gear wankery. Which is important, but art gets left behind because it is harder to talk about, and doesn’t put money in company’s pockets. But I’d like to talk about composition.
I’m posting two photos today. They were taken just a few minutes apart and they have similar lighting, similar composition, similar subject. In both I used the classic triangle composition (this is something I’m only half conscious of when I’m taking photos) – one with positive space (seems to come forward), one with negative (seems to recede). In a triangle composition there’s a broad base at the bottom coming to a point at the top of the frame.
The top photo was taken first, and when I downloaded the photos it was also the first to jump out at me. I really liked it. Over the last few weeks, my opinion has been shifting. I’ve gained some distance from the memory of taking these photos, and now I’m thinking the second is better. It has a clearer composition with the high contrast edges of the rock and the log, and it has contrast between two sides of the triangle – the log gives a curvy organic line to contrast with the sharp jagged line of the rocks. Both lead the eye to a focal point – the leaf and the stump in the water on the first one, and the log at the top in the second.
In the end I’m sure it’s subjective. Some people will like one better, and some people the other. But it’s fascinating to me, in something as abstract as a nature photo, how much of a consensus there can be on good or bad photos.
Sometimes a place just doesn’t talk to me. I’m never sure in these cases whether I’m just having an off day, or if the place is just not photogenic. Maybe the light is not matching up with the subjects I’m thinking of, maybe things are great but I just can’t see them. I still take photos, and work that much harder to try to get a good photo, but in the end I still feel let down. Ironically, some of my better images come from these outings, but I usually don’t find them until I’ve had a chance to distance myself from the experience.
Last week I went out to Ministik Bird Sanctuary. I’ve been there a few times before, but this time I tried a new access point (it is a pretty huge area) recommended to me by a friend. I had a good hike, but struggled with the photos. As it turns out, you don’t have to be inspired to take photos.
