Ask yourself these questions
A benefit of shooting digitally is that you don’t have to pay for every exposure as you must with film. Knowing this should set your creativity free – in fact one of today’s most common photographic prescriptions is “shoot first, ask questions later.” This is generally good advice because the more photographs you take, the more you can learn about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a simple fact that if you didn’t take the photo in the first place, you can’t learn from its good and bad points. But taking thousands of pictures in itself won’t magically transform you into an expert. Don’t forget that the “ask questions” part is equally important. In other words, always be prepared to critique what you did right and what you did wrong. Sometimes you’ll have a strong first reaction when you see an image. Generally, a strong reaction – even a negative one – means that the photo is working on an emotional level, one of the signs of success. However, most of your photos won’t evoke that strong immediate response. You might sort of like it, or sort of not like it, but you can’t be more specific in your assessment. Here’s where a few questions can help you conduct self-critiques of your work. 1) How’s the framing?There are an infinite number of ways you can frame a particular subject. You chose one. Was it the best one? What would have happened if you aimed the camera slightly up, down, left, or right to capture a slightly different frame? Often an otherwise fine photo is marred by odd little bits of the scene that are on the periphery, distracting the viewer. Adjusting the framing will often eliminate these. 2) Was it the best camera angle?
Say you are photographing a child. You could stand as you normally do, point the camera down, and snap the picture. Or, you could get the camera down to the child’s eye level and take the shot. Or you could get even lower so that the camera is looking up at the child. You’ll end up with three entirely different portraits. 3) How’s the focus?
If the photo is completely out of focus, it’s generally a write-off, but selective focus can be a powerful creative tool. You can control selective focus by altering the zoom setting or the aperture. If you use maximum telephoto on your zoom lens, the depth of focus will be shallower than if you used maximum wide angle. You can use this for good aesthetic effect – for example, throwing a cluttered background out of focus so that it won’t distract the viewer’s eyes away from your main subject. 4) Was it the best zoom setting?
One of the benefits of modern cameras is the zoom lens. Most point-and-shoot cameras have one, and the most common first lens with a digital SLR is also a zoom. Most of the time we use a zoom lens as a substitute for physically moving the camera position. If we want to bring the subject in closer or include more of the surroundings, we zoom in or out. Suppose you use a telephoto setting to make a subject bigger in the frame. You could also leave the lens setting on wide angle and move the camera physically closer to the subject. Even though you could make the subject the same size in these two frames, the photos will look quite different because by changing the camera-to-subject distance you are also changing the perspective. 5) Was it the right exposure?
Like auto-focus, auto-exposure can make our photographic lives much simpler because the camera does the exposure math, leaving us time to concentrate on the creative aspects of the shot. However, regardless of how sophisticated exposure systems are, they can be fooled. If you leave your camera on auto exposure, inherently light scenes will be recorded darker than you might want, and dark scenes will be lightened. One of the reasons for the failure of night time photography is because the exposure system thinks it has to make the scene lighter, so it over-exposes the scene.
A benefit of shooting digitally is that you don’t have to pay for every exposure as you must with film. Knowing this should set your creativity free – in fact one of today’s most common photographic prescriptions is “shoot first, ask questions later.” This is generally good advice because the more photographs you take, the more you can learn about what works and what doesn’t. It’s a simple fact that if you didn’t take the photo in the first place, you can’t learn from its good and bad points. But taking thousands of pictures in itself won’t magically transform you into an expert. Don’t forget that the “ask questions” part is equally important. In other words, always be prepared to critique what you did right and what you did wrong. Sometimes you’ll have a strong first reaction when you see an image. Generally, a strong reaction – even a negative one – means that the photo is working on an emotional level, one of the signs of success. However, most of your photos won’t evoke that strong immediate response. You might sort of like it, or sort of not like it, but you can’t be more specific in your assessment. Here’s where a few questions can help you conduct self-critiques of your work. 1) How’s the framing?There are an infinite number of ways you can frame a particular subject. You chose one. Was it the best one? What would have happened if you aimed the camera slightly up, down, left, or right to capture a slightly different frame? Often an otherwise fine photo is marred by odd little bits of the scene that are on the periphery, distracting the viewer. Adjusting the framing will often eliminate these. 2) Was it the best camera angle?
Say you are photographing a child. You could stand as you normally do, point the camera down, and snap the picture. Or, you could get the camera down to the child’s eye level and take the shot. Or you could get even lower so that the camera is looking up at the child. You’ll end up with three entirely different portraits. 3) How’s the focus?
If the photo is completely out of focus, it’s generally a write-off, but selective focus can be a powerful creative tool. You can control selective focus by altering the zoom setting or the aperture. If you use maximum telephoto on your zoom lens, the depth of focus will be shallower than if you used maximum wide angle. You can use this for good aesthetic effect – for example, throwing a cluttered background out of focus so that it won’t distract the viewer’s eyes away from your main subject. 4) Was it the best zoom setting?
One of the benefits of modern cameras is the zoom lens. Most point-and-shoot cameras have one, and the most common first lens with a digital SLR is also a zoom. Most of the time we use a zoom lens as a substitute for physically moving the camera position. If we want to bring the subject in closer or include more of the surroundings, we zoom in or out. Suppose you use a telephoto setting to make a subject bigger in the frame. You could also leave the lens setting on wide angle and move the camera physically closer to the subject. Even though you could make the subject the same size in these two frames, the photos will look quite different because by changing the camera-to-subject distance you are also changing the perspective. 5) Was it the right exposure?
Like auto-focus, auto-exposure can make our photographic lives much simpler because the camera does the exposure math, leaving us time to concentrate on the creative aspects of the shot. However, regardless of how sophisticated exposure systems are, they can be fooled. If you leave your camera on auto exposure, inherently light scenes will be recorded darker than you might want, and dark scenes will be lightened. One of the reasons for the failure of night time photography is because the exposure system thinks it has to make the scene lighter, so it over-exposes the scene.
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