| Travel Photography 101 - How to Take Better Travel Pictures |
| I'm no Ansel Adams, but I've been to his house. |
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Travel photography isn't rocket science. And you don't need to be an Ansel Adams to take decent travel photos. You don't even have to be "creative."
Creationism is bunk. I'm not trying to tick off religious fundamentalists here--I'm referring to misconceptions of what artists do. You see, when Michelangelo fashioned David out of a hunk of marble, he didn't "create" anything, he just whacked off the excess material that didn't tell the story he wanted to tell about young David.
Of course, Michelangelo did have to master an unbelievable number of skills in order to work with the kind of materials he used. Fortunately, today's modern cameras eliminate much of the work of making a decent photo--all you need to do is be reminded of a few things before you click the shutter:
- Simplify!
- Compose!
- Take heed of the light!
Like Michelangelo in the quarry, everything you need to make great art is in front of your eyes. You just need to eliminate the junk that isn't part of your esthetic sensibilities. Like Michelangelo, you'll have to think a bit about your subject and have a "vision" of how things will turn out. It's all in the seeing.
So just what are you seeing, anyway?
Imagine that you're looking in the viewfinder of your camera. The scene that plays itself out is, say, a castle on a hill. What part of the viewfinder do you concentrate on before clicking the shutter? Might it be the center, where that castle has parked itself?
Don't worry, it's a mistake a lot of people make. You see, the center of your viewfinder is a sinkhole for bad vision. Your eyes zoom in. You don't see the junk all around. Every once in a while you need to take your eyes for a spin around the edges to see what's going on around the frame.
Have you ever been forced to watch a slide show where the subjects are all smack dab in the center, so tiny you gotta squint to make out what each of 'em is, and whatever it is, it's surrounded by all manner of glaring white sky, roadway, garbage cans and parked cars? Did you stay awake long enough to notice?
Ok, so here's THING TO REMEMBER Number one: Get close, close as you can. You'll simplify things enormously. Sure, you can wait and crop later, but why throw away perfectly good pixels or silver crystals?
The Joys of Composing within the frame
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| Athens - The Acropolis Click photos to enlarge. |
A good photograph conveys a message--"This is the acropolis. The hot, Greek sun is gleaming on its glorious structures, but there's a storm coming."
It's not just a snapshot of the acropolis we're after, but the acropolis in context of its unique landscape within a frame.
That frame is a playground for our eyes. Our eyes have to move about the frame for it to be an interesting playground.
Notice that the acropolis in this picture is not centered. The center would be a weak placement because it would trap the eye by its symmetry and not let it wander around. The eye needs to circle between the clouds and the acropolis to tell the story, so the landscape is moved to the bottom third of the photo.
Thing to Remember Number Two: The law of thirds. Life is given to a photograph when the object of the photograph is placed on a line that splits a photo into 1/3 and 2/3 sections in either dimension.
Two things to remember. That's not bad. Now here are some other hints.
Other Things that are Good to Remember
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Look for Patterns and diagonals
Patterns make a photo into a strong graphic image. A simple pattern might be found in the plowed furrows curving along a rolling hillside. Or it could be found in a simple diagonal that leads our eye from the upper left of the frame to the lower right. When a NASCAR racer jumps the tire barrier, diagonals are easy.
Frame the Frame!
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Look for natural frames to place around the object you're photographing.
Here I've used a break in the stone wall to frame one of my favorite Sardinian Churches. But you won't find this picture in the Europe Photo Gallery because it breaks the next "rule." Can you guess what it is?
Light imposing on the edge of the frame sucks!
You can look at this photo until you're blue in the face and probably you won't like it. Why? Because that blaring white sky is sucking the life out of the subject. Your eyes just can't avoid being drawn away from the church.
You see, the negative part of the image is represented by the dark wall. The positive part of the image is represented by both the church and the sky--but the sky is so much brighter that it throws the whole image out of kilter. The picture would have been much better had it been taken on the other side of the church, but then I'd have had to move the whole danged wall.
Nice church though, eh?
So what can you do about those white skies?
Ok, here's the deal: Film or digital sensors are much more sensitive to UV light than your eyes. On a slightly hazy day there's a lot of UV light. So you're thinking, "That light blue sky isn't bad." But just wait, you'll get a photo back from Wal Mart and that sky'll be whiter than hospital sheets. It's the UV. It's ugly.
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You can remedy this by shooting early or late in the day, waiting for the sky to go completely blue or cloud up, or you can eliminate the sky from your photo completely...or you can...
Frame the ugly sky. Just do like all those postcard photogs do: find a tree and position yourself and your camera so that the branches spread themselves over that dead sky to frame your picture on the top. Works every time. And people will say,"gosh, that's just like a postcard!"
Change your point of view
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Even when you're photographing people, you don't need to always see eye to eye.
On this photo I got down on my knees to get the shot. Why? Is it because the man in black is my king and I tremble before him? Well, actually that's darn close. I want the viewer to experience the immense and serious power this actor in a medieval parade exudes. I want him to appear bigger than life, so I get low and point up.
Notice how the backlighting has emphasized the black of his eye sockets. I like that in this photo, but you'll want to avoid it when you snap that picture of Auntie Mae in her Sunday best, at least if you want to stay in the will. Remember: Watch the light! Mostly, it needs to be behind you unless you're looking to get fancy.
Relationships Between Things
Surprise, vertigo, or something just plain odd
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I like this photo. It was taken on the island of Kos in Greece. The picture shows an odd relationship between the trees, the ground, and the top of a set of corner columns sticking up from an archaeological site just over the hill (click to see the big version, it's clearer). To me, the blue sky, the hint of an archaeological site just over the next hill, and the scrub and limestone environment just scream "Greek Island." (To someone else it might scream, "Dang it, Marie, instead of the McDonalds there's just another darn bunch of busted up columns ahead.")
Color and Symmetry
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This is one of my favorite photos. When I took it I was struck by that color you'll find on a really hot day in the Mediterranean--a kind of steely blue that slaps you in the face like a hot rag and sends people scurrying home to take a siesta (compare the color of sky here to the photo above). But it's not only the sky that tells you it's hot, it's the absence of people in the obvious people-centered setting.
To capture the idea of loneliness and heat as well as the graphic nature of the scene, I placed Martha looking out at the sea in the exact center of the photograph, intentionally breaking those compositional rules we've been talking about. Now your eye can't help falling on the image of the woman, even though she's just a tiny, lonely figure in the photograph. The umbrellas force the issue by framing the scene and forcing your view to the center. It's a static scene, just like Italy during siesta time.
As a bonus, the blouse works well with the sky, the skirt with the umbrellas, and the break between them with the top of the wall. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Size
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I am always struck by the size of doors in Europe, especially on the grand cathederals. I have to confess that I'm not one of those people who goes around searching out churches and the priceless art they contain. I'm quite uneasy with the weight these buildings seem to impose on a visitor, a weight that I don't interpret as exactly benevolent, or God's alone, so I tend to avoid them quite naturally. I've tried to capture that unbalanced feeling of smallness in this picture.
Hey, those are a lot of rules to remember, buddy!
Ok, but there's a way out of all this. Edward Weston was one of America's greatest photographers, and he didn't spend his afternoons memorizing a bunch of rules either, evidently, because here's what he said about compositional rules:
"Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection."
So take a little time to learn to walk(well, with the camera at least). Then, before you stick that viewfinder up to your eye, reflect for a while. It'll all work out in the end.
Happy photography.
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