Photographic techniques
Posts which focus more on the techniques used in photography and editing than on the subjects of the photos
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Gallery: ceilings and floors (and pavements and more)
I wonder which way you usually point your camera? I’m guessing that most of the time, like me, you point it forwards. Maybe you tilt up for a tall building or tree, or downwards to capture a plant or small animal. But what if we were to point it directly upwards or downwards? What would we see?
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Gallery: when the light is right
Studio photographers can spend a lot of time getting the light just right, changing the angles, adjusting the brightness and colour. Landscape photographers don’t have that luxury; we have to work with the light we have, or wait until it changes naturally.
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Gallery: reflecting on black and white
In nature still water provides the best reflections. So most of the photos I have selected for this post are of reflections in water – but not all of them.
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Gallery: seeing Shrewsbury in black and white
Near the English border with Wales sits the historic market town of Shrewsbury. Founded in the Middle Ages it still retains its medieval street patterns and some buildings from that time. It was an important wool trading centre for many centuries.
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Gallery: playing with a selective colour technique
Lisa has set an unusual challenge, the selective colour editing of photos. It’s one that really attracted me to have a go. I love fiddling with my photos, as regular readers will know (I call it editing but really it’s quite often just fiddling!) So the idea of removing much of the colour in an image to leave just a…
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Gallery: twirling away with a new photo effect!
Who says photographs have to be faithful representations? Sometimes it’s fun to play around with images to create something that’s quite wildly different from the original subject matter.
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Gallery: it’s all in the details
With travel photography impossible right now, I challenged myself recently to see how many interesting details I could photograph within a mile of my own front door. I followed a path I have taken almost daily over the last year or so, and very many times before that. It took me along a couple of suburban streets, past the tennis…
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Gallery: Seeing the world in black and white
The world as we see it is full of colour. So it may seem counter-intuitive to take black and white photos, but by draining an image of colour you can draw attention to its other qualities. Texture, contrasting tones, patterns and shapes can all be more obvious in a monochrome shot.
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Gallery: beautiful blooms and bees in close-up
When photographing flowers I like to get really ‘up close and personal’; to peer deep into their hearts. And if an insect such as a bee wants to join me on that adventure, so much the better.
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From forgettable to favourite: editing for impact
Some say that a photo should be a direct representation of what we saw as we clicked the shutter. I say, that is impossible. The eye, like the camera, may see the true picture, but the brain tends to see what it wants to see, and the photo may therefore disappoint.
