A Blast from the Past……
Before I head outdoors for the afternoon, I thought we’d have an image from the past (in the absence of any new current photos to share – yes, the cool change has arrived and the temperature is cool enough for a walk).
I took this photo on the 6th January 2011. I had just bought my DSLR, but for some reason I seem to have shot this with my little Canon Powershot A3000 IS. Must have been too nervous and unsure of myself to attempt this with the DSLR.
This morning I edited the image again – this time with the Mac’s iPhoto ‘antique’ setting to soften the colour and the ‘soft edge blur’ to reduce the brighter red buds which threatened to overpower the main central subject. Now that I’ve worked out how to access the old back-up hard drive (sitting on my lounge floor gathering dust), I am slowly winding my way through the old photo folders trying to find my favourite images to drag across to the little Mac Pro laptop. A 2 Terabyte ‘back-up’ drive and a 500GB little Mac laptop don’t quite have the same storage capacity! And…….it’s hard on the eyes trying to see which images have the best focus on the 13″ laptop screen.
I don’t often put subjects in the centre of the frame, but this image seemed to call for that type of composition.
I like the softness of the picture and the sharp centre.
And yes, sometimes it’s necessary to put things in the middle of the picture – a good choice here.
Thanks Timo, glad you agree about the centre position on this one.
Since you’re an experienced photographer, do you have any preference for where horizons should sit in an image. I noticed David du Chemin puts some horizons right in the centre of the frame and yet I’ve read that horizons (eg beach/sea) should be above or below the centre of the frame. Every now & then I like some of my horizons in the centre too.
I’ve never been one to follow all the ‘rules’ in life and sometimes I like to break a few rules in photographic composition.
I guess we all have a slightly different ‘photographic eye’.
Hi Victoria,
As for preferences for horizons, this depends on the subject. When you do landscape photos it is often advisable to “divide” the picture into three parts. Upper third for sky down to the horizon, middle third for the main subject, lower third for the foreground. This is pretty old school, but still very effective for many pictures.
However, if you take a photo of an empty landscape, it can be quite impressive to put the horizon very, very deep and have lots of sky – this emphasises the vastness of a terrain.
Very important (with exceptions) – the horizon should be level. Many forget this when they take photos of someone on a beach – they just pay attention to their main subject and neglect the background/horizon…
However, you do many close-up photos as far as I can tell, so the horizon question should not be too important for you, I guess.
About rules: it is important to know and internalise them, so you can break them more effectively.
Hope I didn’t sound overly didactic…
Cheers,
Timo
Thanks for the advice Timo. As you mentioned, I do mostly close-ups – firstly, because that’s what I can see best and secondly, because I’m rarely in a location to see any great landscapes.
Lovely Victoria ~ I took a whole bunch of photos of roses this past weekend (new DSLR) — since getting the flowers as birthday surprise… I’m happy with them, but not expert enough to be a good critic. Can’t pick a favorite to post as of yet but maybe soon. This antique finish is beautiful with such a pale delicate flower as this. Mine is bright red
xo Love to ou…
Thanks Robyn.
I can’t wait to see your first few images using the new DSLR. I think it took me about 2-3 weeks to stop my right eye quivering when looking through the viewfinder with my ‘distance’ spectacles (as compared to looking through the LCD screen of my little Point & Shoot with my ‘reading’ spectacles).
Personally, I think roses are really hard to photograph outdoors. Overcast day or filtered indoor light seems to work best. In fact, this applies to Rhododendrons, brightly coloured Azaleas and a few other flower species.
How about you post 3-4 different images of your roses in the one post (before they die), and let your followers offer some opinions. Everyone is different, so I daresay you might be surprised at the varying opinions. I didn’t like the colouring of this post’s rose image until I ‘doctored’ it this morning with that antique editing tool.
It’s not often you get a good photo of a rose front-on. I prefer rose images slightly from the side.
The rose buds in the background of the image in this post were bright red and really detracted from the main open rose bloom. I used the Mac iPhoto ‘antique’ finish on some of my niece’s wedding shots that were very ‘grainy’ from the high ISO I used on the night. It worked really well as reducing the ugly blotchy skin tones on people’s faces. I’m still a ‘beginner’ level when it comes to using photo editing tools, but my training in Art & Design and watercolour painting skills definitely help in achieving the end result in my photography compositions.
I’m not sure ~ still not really wanting my blog to be major photography oriented (in technical sense of major analysis/critique) — just need it to stay “therapy” for me on emotional front – so the “feeling” and sentiment is more important to me… actually resisted accepting this gift of DSLR camera… but someone insisted.
Maybe with time… If my pain reduced I might even consider a different blog for more technical photo efforts ! Right now dying in neck shoulders and hips though
I have a good friend who is a professional photographer who was so sweet to send me (just yesterday) a whole set of handmade flashcards about design and technique….must have taken her a month to create these. She understands pain so knew it would be easier for me to mediate on these little cards rather than reading a book
~
xxoo
That is one of the most beautiful floral shots I’ve seen, Vicki!!!
Thankyou for the lovely comment Steve.
I know you’re a Rose-lover anyway. Somewhere amongst the old photos are a few more ‘rose’ images, but it’s so hard to find anything on this old back-up disc.
I’m still looking for a particular Meerkat photo that I want to put on 500px – I’ve been looking for about 3 days at each folder labelled ‘Zoo’ but can’t find it. I do so wish I had my old desktop computer, it was easier to find favourite images on that ‘windows’ computer.
Very lovely!
Thankyou Bente.