I learned a lesson, so simple and obvious I'm almost embarrassed to state it: Pay attention to the background! (I mean really watch out for it)
Look at this sign. Can you see it? Me neither. I wasn't paying attention to the background. 
Here I tried harder, but the background is still too busy.
OK, so here I was able to get the outline of the sign, but it's squeezed between buildings, and the bright sky has sucked out all of its color and detail. (Oops, I hadn't realized I was photographing in "macro" mode for these three photos, that doesn't help.)
Again, this sign is lost in the background.Ah, now here's a better one of the same sign:
With the following photos I really thought I was being careful with the background, but I guess it wasn't enough.
For both of these I could have taken just a small step to the side to separate the subject from its background...Hmm... Which one of these two is better?
OK, I'll admit, I tried my hand at editing. I guess it makes the eye focus on the main subject. I won't be doing it often though, it takes too much time. And it does feel like cheating to me.
I also realized it's OK to leave out part of your subject in order to get a good background. This photo came out pretty well for instance, even though I hesitated to leave out some of the beautiful wrought iron of the sign:
Trying to fit it all in meant having the house in the background, and that spoilt the shot.Finally the problem I had with using the sky as a backdrop is I lost a lot of the color and detail of the subjects. Is there some setting I should use to get a good shot of details despite the brightness of the sky? I guess that would be the time to use fill-in flash. I tried but was too far from the signs.
7 comments:
Sorry Kai I'm giving you a lot to read... but don't worry, you don't have to read all this any time soon. I'll slow down my output anyway.
I have to say, I'm not a big fan of these photos. Maybe they're too much of an exercise. Also it's hard to judge the pictures when they're so small, and I'm click-lazy. (Project #4567 on my plate is to pop up a larger image when you hover over a thumbnail, kind of like here). And I find the "solution" of having just the sign on a sky background is a bit cold.
The first picture could have been quite good if you'd crouched down. The second has nice colors: if you'd just shifted a bit to the left and a tiny bit forward, might have been great.
As you say, this one is pretty nice. The facade is a nice counterpoint. Too bad the deer is out of focus. But unlike most of the others, the lighting is good. It's not à contre-jour, so the deer is well-lit.
I agree, the sky background was a bit systematic. But I was surprised to see how hard it was to get a clean shot of something that sticks out so obviously like a street sign.
I like the pop-up photos in the example you linked to.
> I like the pop-up photos in the example
Is that a feature request?
I think it could be done systematically on the site with a bit of clever JavaScript
but I don't HAVE TIME! :-)
No no, please, don't! I may end up losing my job from spending so much time on this blog, don't you too waste all your productive time!
Hey!!!
Great pics.!! Did you get those backdrops from http://www.aurabackdrops.com ??
Post a Comment