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.
I like how you described your thought processes here Steve. Thanks.