Astro Visual Photography

Sometimes your eye tells you there’s a good photo in front of you but when you take the shot it just doesn’t have anything special about it. You know the scene looked good to your eye but your photo isn’t reflecting that. What do you do?

A Different View

OBJECTIVE:

As I described above, I was just walking along this boardwalk and my eyes told me there was a nice photo here. As I framed the shot I realized that what I was seeing in the viewfinder was not going to result in a photo worth keeping. I needed to figure out what my eyes had seen and how to capture it.

COMPOSITION:

In this situation, where the subject/scene is something mundane, I ask myself how I can make the shot different from what I’ve seen most often. I think about the view my feet or knees have (if they had eyes too) and look for angles that I don’t remember seeing at all, or at least very often, in other photos.

I chose a section with a slight curve in it (our eyes like curves quite often) and decided to use the view my feet were enjoying and step a little to my right so the view wasn’t too centered.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/80th – f2.8 – ISO 200. 24mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Handheld. No flash.

POST PROCESSING:

Small amount of sharpening. A blur technique applied.

END RESULT:

The end result is a shot our eyes never usually see at all … unless we fall over. And then usually don’t take a moment to enjoy the view anyhow.
By using the curve of the boardwalk, and being slightly off-center, the photo has strong leading lines (the side railings and boardwalk itself) which lead our eye through the photo as we wonder where it’s going.

Not every photo has to be clear about what it is portraying. Perhaps what you want  to portray is some mystery, some intangible notion or thought. Sometimes the power of a photo can come from what it isn’t saying outright, but from what it’s suggesting to the viewer. A good photo of this genre will suggest different things to different viewers.

Lost in Thought

OBJECTIVE:

I wanted to take a photo that used light and shadow, but not flash as a light source. I also wanted the photo to say something although I wasn’t sure what that was at first. I was in a pensive mood. I wanted to take photos but felt rather uninspired. That’s when I realized I could use me and my mood as the subject and with luck, it might produce a photo that could be interpreted differently by different viewers.

COMPOSITION:

The light coming through the vertical blinds made some of my decision for me here. With the blinds only slightly open I could see the sort of light I was looking for … directional. This meant I needed to place my subject to the left of frame and choose to put myself well to the left to show more of the blinds, but more importantly, create some active space. Active space (sometimes also called negative space) is an area of the photo with less elements in it, that is used to leave space for what happens next, to suggest something. In this case, I wanted the viewer to follow the gaze of the subject and wonder what he might be looking at, and therefore thinking as well.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/60th – f8 – ISO 200. 68mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod. No flash. Only lighting was the ambient light and the strong light coming through the blinds.

POST PROCESSING:

Small amount of sharpening. A lighting render tool used. A blur technique applied.

END RESULT:

The lighting render created a dark outer vignetting effect which, in turn, created the effect of using the person as a frame for the left side of the photo. The blur technique I used softened the blinds but allowed me to keep the facial features sharp and clear which I think enhanced the effect of the active space.

I think this does as it was supposed to. What is he thinking? What is holding his attention? He looks worried? Concentrated.

Night photography often attracts new photographers attention but many I find have little idea how to go about it.
It’s not as scary as one may think.

Brisbane's Story Bridge

OBJECTIVE:

I’d taken several photos from the other side of the bridge and several of the city without the bridge on this evening but decided I wanted to find a view that wasn’t seen as often. I drove around the roads that skirted the river until I saw this view and decided it was what I’d been looking for. The reflections and city as a backdrop fitting nicely for me.

COMPOSITION:

I could have chosen several focal lengths here but found too many distraction out wide of the bridge and found that by zooming out I introduced too many foreground elements as well. In the end I decided to zoom in to eliminate as much as I could of those distractions but leave enough in the foreground to show the height above the water.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

30 secs – f8 – ISO 100. 18mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Tripod.

The settings you choose will often vary depending on how dark it is and how much light there is in the scene. I usually choose around f8 for my aperture because it’s usually reasonably sharp on most lenses and gives a good depth of field as well. A lower ISO setting helps to reduce noise. Then I adjust the shutter speed to cater for the amount of light. In a brighter scene I might have used only around 10 secs or less.

POST PROCESSING:

I straightened the shot because it was a bit lopsided and I slightly boosted the colours from memory.

END RESULT:

There are some pretty colours you can catch shooting Brisbane from across the river but shooting from this view added in that dominant orange reflection from the bridge lights which I thought was very striking and bright enough to create a silhouette effect in the foreground. This added some depth perception also.

Composing wildlife can be challenging. Wildlife don’t often want their photos taken Quite often we are forced to shoot in the general direction and hope for the best. But now and then a creature, such as this little lizard, is happy to have a few moments in the spotlight.

Rainforest Skink

OBJECTIVE:

I was in the rain-forest and simply looking for anything that caught my eye, and this little guy did. He was just coming out of his hole on the top side of a large, fallen tree. He saw me and froze. But, millimeter by millimeter, he slowly crept further out, showing more and more of his body. I decided right then that I needed to get this shot before he was right out to try to show his home habitat.

COMPOSITION:

I chose to take a fairly close up shot of the skink as I wanted to show his features as best as I could. As he was moving, albeit millimeter by millimeter, I thought leaving some active space in front of him would help to give the feel that he was headed in that direction. Hence the area in front of his head with little in it. Active space is an area in your photo that usually devoid of any major elements in order to help your main subject in some way. It might be clear track in front of a race car to show where it’s headed for instance.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/400th – f5.6 – ISO 400. 310mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Handheld. Centre weighted metering. On Camera Ext Flash.
I dialed back the flash here to give just enough light to light up the subject.

The darkness in the rain-forest made it necessary to bump up the ISO if I was going to hand hold a shot at a focal length of 310mm. I wanted the shutter speed up as fast as possible so I settled with 1/400 at f5.6. I figured the close up shot didn’t need too much depth of field and getting a sharp photo was more important to me.

POST PROCESSING:

Sharpening was the only adjustment.

END RESULT:

I’m happy with the result. We can see the features of the lizard quite clearly and the moss that surrounds his home. We can see that his back end is still in the hole. The wide aperture of f5.6 and the long focal length have created enough blur in the background so as not to be distracting.

Feel free to leave comments

Sometimes a subject by itself just doesn’t ’sing’ enough to make a good photo in your eyes. This is where using other elements to enhance your subject can make a difference.

Brisbane's Ferris Wheel

OBJECTIVE:

I’d taken several shots of the ferris wheel from various angles, and although looked fine I wanted to try to get something a bit different.

Looking around for other elements I could include to make the photo more interesting, I decided to walk along the ‘Arbour’, a Bougainvillia covered walkway, to see if a view struck me. The colour of the Bougainvillia looked like it might provide a nice splash of colour in an otherwise monochrome looking scene.

COMPOSITION:

The height of the ferris wheel pretty much was going to dictate that it would be the highest element in the photo so that left me to decide where to position the walkway. I found little that impressed me in terms of getting the walkway to form a frame to the left or right of the photo so I went with a foreground interest composition and simply walked forward while looking through the viewfinder until I eliminated any distractions and had the scene I wanted.

SETUP & SETTINGS:

1/200th – f20 – ISO 400. 38mm focal length. No filters on the lens. Handheld. Centre weighted metering. On Camera Ext Flash.
I used the flash here to try to give a little fill light to the walkway.

POST PROCESSING:

A slight curves/levels adjustment. I used a ‘Burn Tool’ to darken the darker parts of the clouds to create a heavier feel.

END RESULT:

I think I got something along the lines I was looking for. The white ferris wheel it’s purple, windowed cars is quite striking up close, but from a distance it becomes rather drab. I’ve seen many photos with the city lights behind it but really wanted to find something different from that.
The Bougainvillea walkway creates an element of interest that grabs your eye before you look up to examine the wheel itself.
I think the Bougainvillea competes with the wheel for interest but I don’t that as they seem to work fine together for me.

Don’t be shy telling me if you agree or not