It’s been too long since I wrote on the blog, so I am going to write you all a big one today. The title is pretty bloody obvious, but if you didn’t get it the first time this blog post is going to be about getting the poor non-artistically minded to take photos that can be classified as art.
Now I’m sure that some of you out there would be slightly put-off by what I just said. In your minds you’ll be thinking “Ah, another art-brained twit telling me to feel the vibe of the situation”. If you were, don’t. I am not artistically minded in the least. I can’t draw, paint, sculpt or do stuff like collages and scrapbooking. I even suck at scientific drawings - during my stint as a Science Teacher all my students knew it well. But despite all my failures in other forms of art I can pull off artistic photographs. Why? I have done some reading and the continual application of some simple to remember concepts has ensured that I can pull off good shots. N.B. I still take shit shots – but my ratio of good to shit is getting better as time goes on.
1. SEX
No, this doesn’t mean that you should go out and shag anything and everyone you see. SEX stands for Simplify and EXclude. It isn’t one of my original ideas – I read and stole it from Ken Rockwell’s Website (which can be found HERE). You see something. You grab your camera and in about two seconds you’ve taken the shot and you’re off taking a photo of something else. You should have used SEX to refine your picture – it takes more time, but it give you a better photo. It’s an issue with everything these days – we are so obsessed with getting things done in super-quick times that we very rarely stop and think. I own a Balda Baldessa I which isn’t metered, doesn’t have autofocus and the film winder is manual. Every time I take a photo I spend at least one minute getting everything organised for it. Some of you will think ‘That’s a 60 year old camera, get a digital and come into the 21st century buddy’, but I actually enjoy using it.
SEX is the one thing that I always think of when I take photos. It’s one of the best keys to photographic composition: if you simplify your shot so that only the stuff you want in there is, you will get a much better image. This means that you will need to spend more time looking at the edges of your viewfinder. Too many people get the interesting thing in the middle and then snap away. Don’t do this!
Above: This may look like it is something from the 1960’s, but it was only taken a few months ago. I had to simplify the image to exclude all the modern stuff that filled the street, thus giving me the feel that it has.
Above: These vials only stand around 3cm tall. I got in close and by doing so Simplified the shot by EXcluding the rest of the bench that they were sitting on.
Above: If I took this shot without using SEX it would be just another happy-snap of the Dangarsleigh War Memorial.
2. FARTing
Art can be described as ‘Something that causes the viewer to feel an emotion’. FARTing is a good way to ensure that the feeling you get from a subject can be transformed to your viewers.
Another acronym, and again it is from Ken Rockwell (which can be found HERE). It’s meaning is as follows:
Feeling (You often get a feeling that a particular thing/place would make a good photo)
Ask yourself “What is it about that particular scene that interests me?'”
Refine (by using SEX and your brain)
Take the photo
Ken Rockwell’s website gives heaps more explanation to it, but that’s what I have distilled and use. You may thing that I should have put FARTing up as number one, but I personally use SEX more often.
Above and Below: What feelings do you feel when viewing these? Everyone is different – some may feel desolation, others nothing. Interpretation of art is one of the most confusing areas for me to understand.
3. The Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is simple – you divide your photo into three both vertically and horizontally (so it looks like a Noughts and Crosses board). The rule of thumb with it is that if you compose around the thirds you will get a visually appealing image. I don’t put much stock in it, but I usually try it out when I’m composing. If it doesn’t look right in the viewfinder it probably won’t look right on film. But just because i don’t use it all the time doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. Try it out and see if it works for you.
4. Pimp my Digital Camera!
Ok, so you’ve bit the bullet and spent a pile of cash on a good camera. The only issue is that for reasons seemingly unknown your expensive piece of kit gives you washed out colours and not much contrast. Despite what you may think this isn’t happening because you didn’t buy the better model, it has to do with the fact that you’re probably letting your camera think for itself. Don’t worry – most of the issues with colour and contrast can be fixed, but the act of taking a good shot is up to you and you alone.
A. White Balance
When you take a photo where the colours seem to predominately blue in colour you’ve got an issue with White Balance. Look for a thing in your camera menu which says WB. You should get a menu showing different images. The shadow setting will give you the warmest colours for your camera. It’s a cool trick used to make scenes more life-like in a lot of instances. Ken Rockwell has a better explanation of it HERE.
Above: A scene with normal colour levels but WB set to SHADOW. The yellow of the trees really comes out.
Above: Almost identical scenes, taken about 20 seconds after each other. The one on the left had the WB changed to SHADOW.
B. Colour settings
If you think that changing the WB on your camera is good, but you really want to get the colours popping as they should be, you should set your camera to VIVID. You should even be able to go further in and change the saturation levels – turn them all the way up and enjoy colours that are something else. You can always change back to normal at any time, but I really only shoot with VIVID or MONOCHROME on my digital SLR nowadays.
Above: It was a spectacular sunset, but switching the camera to VIVID ensured that I could capture it.
C. Contrast
I shoot in Black and White on my D5000. People will tell you not to, and that you can make any shot B&W by using photo editing software. I don’t like to use software like that at all, so I shoot in B&W. The issue I had with it until recently was that there wasn’t much contrast – there were piles of greys but hardly any black and whites. The problem – Contrast. If you have a Nikon you may need to turn off Active D-Lighting to get access to it, but it makes it so much better.
Above: Whilst ADL is a great tool to use, the contrast in the two shots above could only be achieved by turning it off and then changing the contrast settings as high as possible.
5. Filters
Buying lenses may be a cool thing to do, but a lot of the time the addition of a filter means that you can do a lot more than normal. The first filter you should have is a UV filter – it doesn’t do much at all but it protects your lens from scratches (which is a good thing to prevent if you’ve just spent $400 on a lens). The second one I’d recommend is getting a Circular-Polarising filter. It works just like a pair of sunglasses, and is really good for making skies a much more darker blue, and stopping the reflection on water and other non-metallic objects. For really bright light (like most of day here in Australia) a neutral density – ND – filter helps as it cuts a pile of light hitting the lens. You can get a whole different range of them done too. The other filter I carry around is an IR (>650nm) filter, but remember that you will need a tripod to use this bugger – exposures of up to 30 seconds should be expected!
Above: All three photos were taking using an IR filter in the first few hours of dawn.
6. Look!
The best tools to use for photography is not the expensive camera that you have, or the super-dooper lens with chromatic aberration and vibration reductive-ness and the tripod made from the same stuff as the space shuttles. I use free cameras that were made in the 50’s and still get good shots. The very best tool that you can use for photography are your two eyes. Look at things. Think about what you see. Change your angle and height (usually by crouching down) and see if it all changes. Think if it will look different in black and white or colour. Zoom in or out (if you’ve got a prime focus lens you can do this by taking a few steps closer or away from your subject).
7. Take the photo!
Even with all of this don’t forget to take photos. Over time you will get better at what you do. I’ve only had my DSLR for a few months, and I am still learning. I will always be learning about this stuff. It’s a real challenge for someone as scientifically minded as myself to look at things from an artistic perspective. But I try, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t either.
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