I had the chance this morning to review a friends images. He has a fantastic eye, but I found a few things that I could tell him that generically applied to most of his images. In fact, I think it might be true for many people, so I thought I would post them here.
1 Focus/Sharpness – Focus just has to be TACK sharp for an image to work. What is the main focal point of the image, and is it in perfect focus? If not, it’s gotta go because sharpening in software just isn’t going to make up for a lack of focus. On wildlife/birds, the eyes have to be so sharp and in focus that you don’t NEED any software to ‘fix’ it. You would be surprised how many images I get rid of because of this.
2. Lighting – on the wildlife, if the face is in shadow, and there is light around – not so good. You want the face lit up and the eyes to be tack sharp.
3. Light edges – watch the lighting around the EDGE of your photo. The idea is to draw the person in. Let’s say you have a bird, eyes tack sharp, a little bit of sun on the face, and a catch-light in the eye. Perfect, right? Except that there are light areas around the edge of the photo – guess where your eye is drawn? Well, it is confused. You look at the bird, but then are drawn to the edges – the light areas. Humans go dark to light, so if you darken the edges and draw them in to an ever-increasing light area in the center, it works a lot better.
4. Horizon line – make sure it is ALWAYS straight. Off just a bit, and the person looking at it will not know what is wrong, but will know something is.
5. Background – when you take a picture, ALWAYS check to see what is behind – especially the head area. If you have boards, twigs, etc., growing out of a bird’s head, it looks weird. Also make sure that there are not elements like that that are on the edges of your image. Another words – some stray branch coming in from the side not connected to a tree, and not part of the central image.
Add these thoughts into your shooting and post processing, and you can take your work to another level! If you have an ‘eye’ for things, it then becomes a question of tips, tricks, technique, when to do something or not, to enhance your images.
Always try to take the most perfect shot with the camera, instead of thinking to just take the shot and ‘fix it later’ in Photoshop. But, you CAN go through taking the best picture with the camera, and then believe that you can do something special/different in software afterwards. That’s how I think about images. I see something out there, try and get the best shot I can, but MANY times have something better in mind because I know what I can do with the software when I get back. That’s just as much fun to me, and that’s kind of what I’m known for.
Landscape and portrait photographer, David E. Warner captures the breath-taking beauty of the Mohawk Valley and Southern Adirondacks region and its people with his mastery of color, composition & light. He shuttles between upstate New York and Texas for part of the year - working on portrait and film projects.
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