The Discerning Photographer

Photographic cropping and composition

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:25:39 +0000

I’m still shooting flowers. If this isn’t for you, you might want to check back in a few weeks when the explosion of blooms has slowed down; right now it’s still a rocking party out in my yard and I don’t try to resist the shooting opportunities.

We had a heavy afternoon shower yesterday and this morning there was still a heavy coating of moisture on everything, combined with an enticing coolness to the temperature. It seems like 20 different things are blooming and as I started, I found myself thinking about how we go about composition and cropping.

Composition is something we do on-the-fly, in-camera, as we photograph; cropping refers to after-the-fact decisions we make during the editing process. I’ve written about both of these topics before, but here are a few of the relevant things that run through my mind as I’m out shooting:

Composition is all about trying to make order out of chaos, isn’t it? We start with the visual chaos that is the world around us and try to simplify it into something elegant and beautiful when we compose a photograph.

This bunch of yellow wildflowers is a case in point.

They are fantastic, splashing color in an unruly tangle of in this small triangle patch that we have along a gravel path. Beautiful but not really much of a photograph. But by getting in close and singling out a single flower, then letting a few others serve as reference in the out-of-focus background, I get something I like quite a bit:

Now here’s another example.This day lily is a beauty and not a bad photo here:

But isn’t it much more striking in this second version? Incidentally, you could crop this out of the first version, but you wouldn’t get the background as out of focus, lessening the impact of your result.

Finally, a squash vine growing in the vegetable garden. The focus point is on the blossom, but the young squash fruit provides context and visual reference which adds interest and understanding to this image.

Even the yellow wildflower image above-the third photo in the post- is strengthened with a crop. I have a bit of ‘dead space’ at the bottom and right sides of this photo of the yellow wildflower. Cropping these out makes this a better image:

These are all in-camera decisions,but cropping can improve an already-good photograph. Going back to the squash photo above, simply tightening up the composition improves the result, even if subtly. The crop moves the flower and the squash fruit closer to the corners of the composition, creating more visual tension and a stronger diagonal between the two interest points of the shot:

So think carefully about not just your compositions, but also about keeping a critical eye out for how you might improve your images with some judicious cropping. These two skills can work hand-in-hand to make you a better photographer. Happy shooting!

Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Or subscribe to our Facebook page or our Twitter feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog

Creative Focus in Your Photography

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:01:25 +0000

We’re having our usual riot of Spring-time blossoms here in south Lousisiana. The antique rose in the side yard stopped me in my tracks the other morning and I pulled out a camera.

This little bush grows next to the shed and receives almost no attention. But this year it has burst forth with blossoms like never before. We don’t get them picked often enough and there on the bush one can find the entire life cycle of a rose blossom, from first bud to withered corpse. Makes for some interesting image possibilities…

Which got me thinking, as I was composing, about how critical your focus decisions are to the results you ultimately achieve. I was using my favorite lens—my Canon 50mm macro—and looking for ways to isolate and combine blossoms in the frame. Starting at f2.8 @1/200^th sec, I was trying different compositions, searching for what was pleasing and what worked. Although this usually does a great job for me, today it was too shallow a focus range for this composition.

What’s in focus is a combination of a few things: what you focus upon; how much depth of field you achieve by your aperture selection; and finally, your focus plane as well. In the case of this rose photograph, I needed help in all areas.

I’ve written extensively elsewhere on the site about aperture and depth of field. The factor that was important in this case was really the focus plane of my camera. What is focus plane? It’s a simple concept but a bit difficult to explain.

Your DSLR's CCD light sensor is the 'film plane' and your lens the 'lens plane' for our discussion here. (Illustration courtesy of Wikipedia)

Imagine your DSLR from overhead, looking down, or from one side. Unlike old view cameras with flexible movements, your DSLR has a fixed, built-in and parallel relationship between the lens and the flat, CCD light sensor inside the camera (what used to be the film plane in film cameras). With these things parallel to each other, things should be in focus at even your minimum, wide-open aperture in a consistent sharpness from one side of your image to the other and from corner to corner of your shot.

Now as you rack your lens through its focusing range, whether you can see it or not, the focus plane is the extension of this parallel relationship out into space. It’s most noticeable, and most important, when working up close, like I was doing with the roses.

In this case, my first photo of this two-rose grouping (above) had only one side of the right-hand rose in focus, with the focus dropping off to the right edge. I could have gotten out a tripod and stopped the lens way down, to maybe f22, and solved the problem—but I would have ended up with other stuff in focus that I didn’t want—like the other rose. This would have diluted the impact and created a different photograph. The solution had to do with the focus plane: I needed to move myself around a bit, getting the front edges of the right rose parallel to the back of my camera( a good way to think about the CCD and where it’s located). Then, with just a bit of aperture increase (down to f6.3, or just over 2 f-stops), I was able to get what I was after: petals of right rose in focus, with the left rose dropping out of focus.

Here is the same basic composition, shifting the plane of focus to be parallel to the front of the right rose, and with the lens stopped down to f6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/50th. (Copyright 2012 / Andrew Boyd)

So think about focus plane the next time you’re shooting up close and you’ll find it can enhance your results. Good luck!

Quick Tip: While we’re on the subject of up close, hand-held shooting, here’s a great tip: compose your shot, focus on what’s important, then move your entire body ever-so-slightly in and out of focus as you shoot versions of the shot. You’ll find this is far more effective than trying to constantly autofocus on your subject.

Framing Your Photography

DiscerningPhotog — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 02:55:32 +0000

At some point you’ll probably have some photographs you’ve shot that you want to frame. How you go about the framing–the decisions you make–will have a big impact upon the impact that your images ultimately have. I’ve spent most of today framing and here are a few thoughts about the process.

Archival vs. Non-Archival Printing

Now that archival digital prints are inexpensive and easy to make, you’d be crazy to NOT create an archival workflow for your to-be-framed prints. Before the advent of archival pigment prints, creating archival prints—prints that will last well in excess of 100 years—was an expensive and laborious process: the prints had to be printed on a rag-type printing paper, run through multiple washes in an archival washer, then dried on fiberglass screening. The same results or better are now available from the current generation of Epson professional printers like the R1900 or better; or you can simply get a lab using such a printer to make your prints for you.

Archival Framing Considerations

You’ll need acid-free storage for those archival prints you’ve created, because acid is the enemy of archival prints. I use the inexpensive archival prints boxes available from Dick Blick Art Supply, although there are lots of others sources out there as well. Keep your prints loose in these boxes until you get around to making your framing decisions. The boxes are the second step, after your printing, in this archival workflow.

What You Need to Know about Mat Board

Now that you’ve made archival prints and have them safely stored in acid-free boxes, you’ll need to decide about the makeup of your framing itself. The first thing to consider is that almost ALL of the mat board that you see in those racks at the art supply or hobby store are NOT acid free product: put that in front of your archival print and you’ve just ruined the entire process. The acid in the mat board will eventually leach into your print, damaging it beyond repair. What you’ll want to find is acid-free mat board, frequently described as ‘museum board,’ since it’s the only product that an art museum will use to frame prints. Two good brands of acid-free mat board are Strathmore and Crescent. I’ved used both with good results.

Foamcore

Behind your mat board and your acid-free print, what sort of material do you want in contact with the back of your print? Acid-free, of course! So ordinary foamcore won’t do: you’ll need acid-free foamcore to back up your print. I buy this from Blick as well, whenever I place an order for mat board.

Metal Frames or Wood?

Photographs used to almost always be housed in aluminum frames, either silver or black. This is still a perfectly acceptable (and cheap) way to frame your images, but I prefer a wood frame for my photographs. I suppose I simply got tired of the metal frames, and the wood frames just look more substantial. A simple, tailored wood frame can’t be beat for showing off your best work. I use both black and a clear pickled finish for my wood frames, depending upon the tones in the image itself. A lot of my split-toned black and white images seem to work better in a pickled frame; you’ll have to figure out for yourself what best sets off your work.

Two more minor, but important tips for your archival workflow; if you’re doing the framing yourself (and I frame all of my images myself), you’ll want to wear white cotton gloves while framing and use linen tape to afix your images to the backing board and to assemble the mat itself.

The white cotton gloves will keep oil from your fingers from attaching itself to your print or mat board, potentially ruining your archival print. I buy these from Dick Blick as well (and no, I’m not getting a kickback from Blick!).

Linen tape is acid-free and the best way to attach your print into position on its backing board when framing. You don’t want your print detaching itself from the backing board and slipping down inside your frame! (It can happen, trust me.) Regular masking tape is not acid-free and will cause problems for you in the long run.

Whether you frame with regular glass material or plexiglass is up to you, both can provide an archival environment for you print. I use plex because it’s required for shipping artwork to any non-local shows and because it’s much lighter, reducing the overall weight of your piece signficantly.

So there you have it: my quick-and-dirty guide to archival print framing. I’m sure I’ve missed some things here, so if you have questions about any of this, ask in the Comments below and I’ll try to answer them.

Camera ‘Feature Clutter’: How to Avoid the Confusion

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 02:05:40 +0000

I received a phone call over the weekend from an old friend who is an amateur photographer, as well as a faithful reader of The Discerning Photographer. He was trying to puzzle his way through a technical camera question.

‘John’ had been out shooting his daughter’s track meets with his Nikon D7000 and a 70-200 mm lens and having a decent bit of success. But he was stumped by one of the nuances of the autofocus system.

John had been using back-button autofocus with his setup, something I have advocated for on this site for a long time. That part was going ok. But choosing his focus point had gotten complicated.

John asked me how I pick my autofocus point—which ‘wheel’ or ‘dial’ I used—while still performing my back-button autofocusing. Huh? Now I was confused. Finally, after about 5 minutes of conversation back and forth, I realized that John thought he should be performing this focus-point selection at the same time he was doing the actual autofocusing on the track meet! You’d need an extra thumb or finger to do this, and probably an extra brain as well!

I explained to John that I almost always use a single-point for focus, and that usually it’s the center point. Sometimes with track, when I know I’ll be shooting vertically, I’ll put that point up about halfway to the top of the vertical frame—where I think the face of the runner will be—for the focus. But I ‘set it and forget it,’ as the expression goes. Then I can concentrate on trying to actually capture a great photograph.

This immediately made sense to John, who seemed relieved to finally have such a simple answer.

What John was suffering from is a common problem in our modern times of techno-whizbang cameras and their accompanying markerting campaigns. I call it ‘feature clutter.’

This happens with lots of the technology we all buy these days, but camera equipment makers are some of the worst about this. An engineer figures out how to add a neat new feature to a camera—whether it’s needed or not—so it gets added. “39-point autofocus with hyperglide technology founded upon our patented reality-based 3 gigabit sensor.” The feature might be a true breakthrough. Or, equally possible, it might be just another feature, ladled on top of the already-overwhelming number of features, that the poor purchaser of this machine is expected to figure out. Whether the feature is fluff or foundation is never explained, since to do so would diminish the selling point of the feature. The user is left with nothing but confusion, when all he or she wanted was to shoot better photographs.

Autofocus points are a great example of this. Single point autofocus. Nine point, 39 point…it never stops. While the cameras can be set up in all of these modes, I don’t know any professional photographer that works this way. Like ‘Program’ mode, letting your camera have too much decision-making control over your results might just work, until the day, and the photograph, that it doesn’t work. Something that you want to achieve in the photograph—your truly unique vision at that moment—runs counter to the ‘accepted wisdom’ that the feature performs. You mash down the shutter and you get something besides your intended result. The moment is lost forever, all because you let the camera do the thinking for you.

So how to determine what’s truly important and what’s simply more ‘feature clutter’? I recommend starting with the basics: the things you need to understand to shoot good exposures, time after time.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

1.Develop a thorough understanding of ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture: what they are, how they function, how to control them.

2.Learn to make good lens choices for each shooting situation you encounter regularly.

3.Shoot lots and lots of photographs.

4. Repeat Step 3.

Everything else is extra.

Over time, this will all make sense. Once you’re out doing the shooting, seeing what works and what doesn’t, what’s important will become obvious. You’ll figure out what you need to thoroughly understand, and what you won’t EVER need to understand. (I absolutely promise you, your DSLR contains features you will never, ever need to comprehend.)

Kick that ‘feature clutter’ to the curb, and good luck!

Photographing On the Water

DiscerningPhotog — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:16:12 +0000

On my list of “Photographic New Year’s Resolutions” that dates back to 2009 has been to get my old aluminum flat boat up and running. A fishing boat that originally belonged to my father-in-law, the boat has worked, and not worked, over the years. After a number of fits and starts, I’ve finally (I think) solved all of the nagging little problems that have stopped me. My motivation: an ideal shooting platform.

What’s a shooting platform? Anything you’re standing or sitting upon when you shoot a photograph. One of the very best shooting platforms, for any photography under a couple of thousand feet, is a helicopter. Take the door off, make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened, and you have the absolute best way to shoot lots of aerial stuff.

When you live in south Louisiana and your primary landscape subject matter is in and around the water, a boat is the perfect shooting platform. For a lot of my work, this has been an overdue development that has me truly excited.

I’ve been on two ‘shake down’ cruises so far, seeing what works and what still needs work. I’m using an old Gott ice chest as a ‘dry box’ for my camera equipment and that seems to work fine. (I have it shock-corded to the bottom of the boat.) I still need to invest in a push pole but have a paddle and very nice donated trolling motor (thanks to a colleague who had an extra one). These things, and my 18hp Nissan outboard, turn my old boat into a fabulous new photographic tool.

I’m researching the northern shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain on Google Earth, planning my next few trips.

So why is this such an exciting development?

One of the fundamental facts of photography concerns vantage point: the position you’re in when you press the shutter determines a big, big piece of the result you will obtain. Now with the boat, I get a chance at an unlimited number of new vantage points to shoot from. This is probably the thing I’m most excited about.

I have two early examples included with this post. Both are images that could not have been shot from land. So right away, I see a new world opening up.

Isn’t this what’s at the heart of our love and passion for photography? Exploring new vistas, working in a new area or in a new way, learning new skills and applications that we can bring to bear upon our work and art.

So in the weeks and months ahead, I plan to spend a good bit of my shooting time out on my new platform.

Bon voyage!

Photo Tripods: It’s All About Perspective

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:30:04 +0000

I do a lot of my landscape work on tripods: there’s simply no better way to set up and shoot when your exposures tend to be very, very long. I’ve written before about my beloved Leitz Tiltall tripod, a sturdy and rugged friend that has served me well for over 20 years (I’m only on my second one in that time period). It’s a great tripod and only about $100, and it’s been a trusted accessory for all of this time. But there are some things it simply can’t do.

I was reminded of this on a recent shooting trip. I was working along the brackish shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain when I came upon some truly fantastic cypress trees. Cypress are a native tree here that’s very happy in the swampy and brackish water of the area, and it’s capable of growing fantastically-shaped roots and ‘knees,’ root-like appendages that can spring up out of the ground near the trunk. Anyway, these cypress roots were amazing and even more complex due to some shoreline erosion that had washed and worn them away into strange shapes. Just my sort of thing.

But: this was all happening down very close to the ground and the waterline, much lower than my Tiltall can go. For the perspective I wanted, I needed a way to set up for my exposures much closer to the ground.

Luckily, back in the car just 10 minutes away, I had a second, cheaper little tripod that I keep for just such a situation. I originally bought it for backpacking but have since found it works great for this type of thing. It’s an inexpensive little Vanguard VS-86 tripod—nothing you could mount a big, heavy lens upon, but enough for an occasion like this.

I ran back to the car and got out the diminutive Vanguard. Working with a Canon 16-35 f2.8 zoom lens">Canon 16-35 f2.8 zoom lens on my Canon EOS Mark IV ">Canon Mark IV, I was able to get create the ‘monumental’ perspective that I wanted.

A Foggy Morning Full of Life and Death

DiscerningPhotog — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:12:20 +0000

It was very foggy this morning when I stepped out the front door, the soft light suffused with a beautiful even glow. Although I had planned to get right in the car and go, the beauty in the scene made me stop, get out a camera and spend some time exploring.

Our property has some beautifuland very old camellia plants on it—huge, slow-growing bushes that are famous for their late-winter blooms in this area. I don’t know much about the history of these plants but I’ve always appreciated the wisdom of some previous, long-dead owner who put them in the ground all those years ago. At a time when most things are still dormant, the camellias put forth a burst of color that rivals anything else that might come along later.

Here in the very early spring,due to our excessively mild winter, the azaleas and Japanese magnolias have already bloomed, a month early, and before the camellias have even finished. This is unusual but gives us a burst of color throughout the landscape unlike any year I can remember.

I was struck while photographingby the compressed flower ‘life cycle’ that I found in front of me: beautiful, delicate blossoms hanging on each stem, and down below on the ground, brown and lifeless shapes that were last week’s beauties! Everything compressed, Nature in a hurry, rushing headlong into what will soon enough be our long, hot summer.

January 2012 Flickr Group Critique

DiscerningPhotog — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:46:12 +0000

Selections from the January 2012 Discerning Photographer Flickr group pool. Discussion below.

One of my favorite things to do when I log onto the site is to check out the new images that have been uploaded to our Discerning Photographer Flickr group pool. The interests and talents of our members are so diverse—it’s a truly eclectic group of shooters, isn’t it? So while it’s a bit of work to assemble (and some months I’m late, like now!), I really do enjoy our online discussion around the images.

This month is no exception. I’ve picked images I like, plain and simple. I’ll explain what I like and why. I may ask a question or two and hopefully we’ll get some answers from the artists. Finally, please add your own two cents in the Comments below and let everyone know what you think. Let’s get started:

‘Lacey 2,’ by Julian Schroeder.

'Lacey 2,' by Julien Schroeder. http://www.flickr.com/photos/julianschroeder/6686485649/in/pool-1182517@N23/

Julian submits some of the very best animal photos. Frequently they’re of what appear to be house cats. You can tell from looking at these that he’s a very patient photographer! ‘Lacey 2’ is another nice example. I do find the red object in the background is competing for my attention in a negative way, though. It might be worth trying to desaturate that area and see if it brings the focus back on that yellow eye. Also, what would happen if you took the crop a bit tighter and split the cat’s face right at the nose? Not sure, but worth considering. What about it, Julian?

‘For the Women I Love,’ by Jar.

'For the Women I Love,' by Jar. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jariceiii/6693426477/in/pool-1182517@N23/

This is a beautiful flower macro. Nicely composed and very importantly, the depth of focusis right for this image. Jar, tell us about shooting this photo: how did you decide upon the focus point? What sort of aperture did you use for this one? These are the kinds of things you must consider in the macro world…

‘Stereo 1,’ by Vitor JK.

'Stereo 1,' by Vitor JK. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitorjk/6670294317/in/pool-1182517@N23/

This past month or so, Vitor has been shooting some really nice abstractions. This one falls into that category. (I’m reminded a bit of the work of Sean Garrett, who we don’t have represented this month.) I’m not sure what we’re actually looking at here, and it doesn’t matter, does it? But since we can ask, Vitor, tell us about shooting this image…

‘Missouri Sky,’ by Gabriel Hasser.

'Missouri Sky,' by Gabriel Hasser. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mamemimo/6739147971/in/pool-1182517@N23/

Here’s a classic, put–your-camera-on-a-tripod-and-point-it-up-at-the-night-sky-and-see-the resulting-magic photo. I’ve always loved that swirl and the not-knowing part of shooting these. So much of digital photography now is instant gratification: chimping to see what you came up with right away. Not with this photo. Gabriel, how many shots did you attempt on this night? And how long was the exposure?

‘Focus on Beauty,’ by Kevin Thornhill.

'Focus on Beauty,' by Kevin Thornhill. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ukphotoart/6668764637/in/pool-1182517@N23/

I’ve really enjoyed getting Kevin’s submissions from London, frequently filled with beautiful young models. Most of this has been street photography but now we’re going into the studio for the first time. Kevin, have you acquired studio space, or made some other arrangement? I like the simplicity and the framing here.

‘Forest Impressions II,’ by Justin G.

'Forest Impressions II,' by Justin G. http://www.flickr.com/photos/justingarofoli/6791302665/in/pool-1182517@N23/

This is an appropriate title for this bit of Impressionism. The color palette is wonderful here with the browns offset by the yellows and greens. So Justin, was this intentional or a happy accident? If intentional, what shutter speed did you use to create the effect? Of is this possibly done in post? (I’m thinking now of a way to do this in PS with a directional blur filter.)

‘London Thames,’ by Sandy Biring.

'London Thames,' by Sandy Biring. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandy6767/6720036257/in/pool-1182517@N23/

We finish out this set with a beautiful river shot from Sandy Biring. I really like this composition and the gold-green working down from the top right towards the vignette, all of it in counterpoint to the boats in the upper left. This photo, with the visible movement of the water, almost seems to dance! Sandy, what are you standing on to shoot this? Is the vignette natural or something you created? Any other thoughts you’d like to share would be most welcome here as well…

OK, that wraps it up for this month’s Flickr Critique. Now please add your thoughts in the Comments below! I’d love to hear what everyone thinks about my selections.

Using Shutter Speed Creatively in Your Photography

DiscerningPhotog — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:09:53 +0000

I was out shooting recently when an old tire, some sand and a bit of water got me thinking about how critical shutter speed can be to all that we do as photographers.

It was just at daybreak along the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain when I came upon an old tractor tire mostly buried in the white sand of a little beach. There was a stiff easterly wind blowing in and a lot of foamy wave action, washing back and forth over the tire. I immediately thought it might be something to work with and set up my tripod and camera. I ‘guessed’ a ½ second exposure to start, and got this image:

This wasn’t really what I wanted at all, was it? The slowness of the shutter was allowing the wave action to come and go, obliterating the magic in the foam along the way. I knew I needed a faster shutter to capture this, so I went to a 1/3 second shutter. Here’s what that looked like:

Amazing, isn’t it? Such a seemingly small change can make a huge difference. Still searching for the best result, I then went all the way up the the ‘blazingly-fast’ shutter speed of 1/4 second:

Finally, this was what I was experiencing, staring down at this scene, the magic and mystery of mvoing water. Here was the proper shutter speed for this moment in time.

But think about it: the ¼ second exposure is actually twice as fast as the ½ second expsure, isn’t it? The 1/3 second shot falls in between the other two. So it’s not surprising that the result would be dramatically different.

Once I had settled on the ¼ second exposure, I made a lot of images, trying to time the wave and foam action to produce the best result. But is was only through experimentation, and paying close attention to that all-important shutter speed, that I worked this out.

The Hard Work of Photography

DiscerningPhotog — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:59:13 +0000

The next time you see an image that you really like, think for a few moments about the photographer that shot it:

He (or she) didn’t roll over in bed that morning and decide to sleep another 30 minutes.

He (or she) didn’t decide to put off shooting on that particular day because there were 20 other pressing things that needed doing.

He (or she) decided to ignore that sore shoulder, or toe blister, or the cold, or the heat, and went ahead and went out shooting.

In other words, he (or she) didn’t make excuses or rationalizations. He (or she) went out to do the hard work of pursuing great images.

And every once in a great while, something magical happens, and a truly transcendent and beautiful image gets made.

So think about this just a bit the next time you see an image that you love. Think about the hard work and sacrifices that were made.

Photography can be rewarding work, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Hi, I’m Andrew Boyd, a.k.a. The Discerning Photographer, and I hope this post has been interesting and informative. Please leave me a comment about it, let me know what you’d like to see more of on the site! You can also sign up for email delivery of all future articles or my RSS feed. Or subscribe to our Facebook page or our Twitter feed. Thanks!–DiscerningPhotog