Time of day

8 a.m.
Noon
4:30 p.m.

These shots show how the color and vibrancy of a picture is affected by the time of day. Normally I'd say stay away from noon. Te goal is to have distinct shadwos that don't obscure the picture but which rather add a bit of variety to it. Color can sometimes (not always) be washed out ion noon time pictures.

Taking your time

In addition to thinking carefully about composition and lighting, another golden rule is: take your time. Don’t be afraid to get off the beaten path – meandering down back roads on a Sunday afternoon can be equally as entertaining as watching the Colts get hammered by the Saints. Once you spot something of interest, don’t be afraid to walk around a bit looking for interesting angles and shadows, and don’t be afraid to get down on your knees to shot up at your subject for a bit more dynamic tension.

Another golden rule of course is: get CLOSE!!

And the final golden rule is to take your SDI card back home and run those images through Photoshop or some other editing software. The pictures you see here are very slightly cropped (I was using my little Nikon point and shoot); the blacks are enhanced a bit in Adobe Bridge, and the colors are saturated a tad and the curves are adjusted to open the shadows. It takes time, but messing around with the software is fun.

My experience is that ALL photos should be edited and enhanced a bit before displaying. This will be particularly true for your end of course Photostory project – don’t turn in unedited pictures.

Composition and Lighting

The major components of any photograph are its composition and the lighting of the subject. These pictures illustrate how important each is: each photo here, taken recently in northern Indiana, displays careful attention to the rule of three’s (note that the pictures are uncluttered with just a few central features), or rule of thirds (you can divide each picture into thirds, with nothing centered, not to mention that each is taken late in the evening or very early in the morning when the color is more vibrant and the shadows help outline the images and create a dynamic instability.

For you high end users and Photoshop owners, these pictures are shot in raw, which on my D80 gives much more initial vibrancy to the pictures than jpg files, plus they are photoshopped using the curves and vibrance tools. I open them first in Bridge and play with the blacks a bit, then move to Photoshop for the rest.

Notice too I wasn’t afraid to shoot directly into the sun. You are often told not to do this, but doing so provides many creative opportunities.