Camera 102

My Picture Problems

As an enthusiastic amateur, I strive to improve my compositions and technical skills. Even though my audience is small, I still hope to communicate my perspectives, emotions and thoughts through my images. Below are some of my most common mistakes. These are not my worst pictures... those do not even make it to the edit stage of my workflow. Rather, these are pictures that I like, but that are not quite as effective as I had hoped they would be.

Time of Day

All photos depend entirely on light. Since most of my images are taken outdoors, that light is usually from the sun. The quality of sunlight depends on several factors, including (1) the angle of the light to the subject, and (2) the degree to which the light is direct or diffuse. In the early morning just after sunrise and in the early evening just before sunset, the angle of sun is low. This produces warmer red tones and longer shadows. Photographers call this time the "golden hour" and these times are generally considered ideal for landscape images (though not exclusively so). Just before the sun rises and just after the sun sets, the colors often shift into the blues. This is known as the "blue hour," which can also lead to interesting landscapes.

The worst time of day is generally midday when the sun is straight overhead. The direct light washes out the subjects' colors, and creates short, dark and distracting shadows that usually sit heavily below the subjects. This time of day is a serious challenge for landscape photographers. When I am shooting in midday with a cloudless sky, I have to work twice as hard to get a usable image. Mostly I do this by (1) using the shadow as a subject, rather than as a distraction, (2) composing my image entirely inside a shadow, thus reducing the impact of direct sunlight, or (3) composing my image to be used as black and white, minimizing my reliance on strong colors. Since midday is usually the most convenient time to head out for a daytrip, I shoot a lot of these images.

Here are two fascinating locations, and the photographs capture the sense of place reasonably well. But the time of day and the cloudless sky resulted in harsh shadows and a general lack of warmth.

These images were shot near sunset. The colors are warmer, and the shadows are longer, softer and more interesting. I often do not have the patience to stick around until sunset, so I take fewer golden hour pictures that I should.

Cloud Cover

Sunlight can also be direct or diffuse. A bright sunny day with no clouds creates harsh light, with little color and with gray or white skies. A heavy overcast day with dark low clouds is equally difficult, with little detail in the sky or on the subjects. The best days are in between these two extremes... the photographer-friendly "partly cloudy." Partly cloudy can take many useful forms. For instance, billowy well-defined clouds slowly moving across a blue sky creates a fascinating sky behind your subject and interesting shadows moving across the landscape. High-altitude thin clouds make for boring skies, but they diffuse the light and accentuate colors, which is ideal for flowers and some wildlife pictures. Thunderclouds are just awesome, no need to explain why. Living in the southwest, the most common day is bright and cloudless. But sometimes I get lucky and find myself treasuring every moment of "partly cloudy."

The two photographs above were taken on different days, with entirely different skies. Cerro de Guadalupe and El Cabezon are fascinating subjects in both images, but the dramatic clouds make the image on the left pop. The clouds add interest to the sky, and they add more complex shadows on the subjects and foreground.

On the left is the photograph I originally shot, and on the right is the same image with the clouds edited out. The photo with the clouds is warmer and deeper, the photo without is colder and starker. Usually when I have good clouds, I try to compose beautiful warm landscapes. When I have no clouds, I compose my pictures to convey cold stark loneliness,

Above are two shots from the same road, though in different locations. On the left, the sky is cloudless and the light harsh. Consequently, I composed my picture to minimize the sky (note how high the horizon sits in the photo), while using high contrast and black & white to emphasize a feeling of desolation. The picture on the right, however, is blessed with a dramatic sky. So here I lowered the horizon and accentuated the colors to capture that feeling of impending storm.

I faced a similar decision in these two photos. The badlands picture on the left was shot midday (with washed out colors) but with a great sky. The photo on the right has great colors, but an absolutely terrible sky. For the photo on the left, I emphasized the drama in the sky, and removed color from the equation entirely. I love the composition of the left photo, but I never got the contrast quite right. The photo on the right just never worked for me, no matter how I edited it.

I do enjoy shooting on cloudless days, but only in locations where I can use that to my advantage. For instance, the abandoned house on the right sits in a lonely plowed field, with a towering empty tree and two rusty old grain bins. The subject itself screams loneliness, desolation and emptiness. The cloudless sky emphasizes those emotions. Here again, I removed the color to create more drama and contrast in the subject,

If I had photographed this scene on a day/time with billowy clouds and warm sunrise glow, I might have moved my composition closer, and tried to convey warmer emotions like nostalgia, lost childhood memories or gently fading history.

This church is also an interesting scene, loaded with potential emotions connected to Americana, Catholicism, history and reflection. Yet I was unable to capture any of that. The composition, the strong contrast between light and shadow, and the cloudless sky left me uninspired, and I never found my footing. It's a lovely place, and I plan to go back and try again.

You may notice a theme here. When faced with unrelenting cloudless skies or flat colors, I often switch to black and white to create more emphasis on the subject, rather than on the scene as a whole. Sometime this works, sometimes it doesn't. For the photo to the left, it didn't work all that well. So I cheated. I removed part of the color, but not all of it. This focused attention on the contrasting reds of the wall with the blues of the sky. The composition below is not perfect, but I still like this image.

I also enjoy cloudless days when I have the opportunity to focus on lone trees. Again, empty blue skies can help emphasize that loneliness, and draw attention to the shape of the tree. It doesn't always work, though. I love the photo on the left, but primarily because of the fence, which adds great depth. The bottom right photo was taken near sunset, and has great color, but the tree itself lacks character and simple definition. The top right photo was taken midday, and lacks good color, but the tree itself is has beautiful curves and clear definition, and the road adds depth. Still, I like the photo on the left more than either of the two on the right.

Foggy days are awesome, but extremely rare in my part of the world. For the lighthouse photo on the left, the fog creates a peaceful mood, while emphasizing the subject and foreground. For the lighthouse photo on the right, the sharper shadows and brighter colors convey higher levels of energy, and the contrast between the bright highlights and dark sky create the impression of incoming weather.

Fog is even more important to forest photography. Shooting forests in bright sunlight, as in the photo on the right, creates harsh shadows. It's hard to see where one tree ends and another begins. But when the fog rolls in, as in the photo on the left, we get great depth and definition, and an ethereal quality. I don't post many forest pictures with harsh lights, since most of them look even worse than the pic on the right.

These two pictures have similar skies. The one on the left is a beautiful muskeg trail in Sitka. However, the heavy skies and low light conflict with the complex foreground and subject. There is too little contrast between the trees and the ground, and the damp boardwalk does not pop out against the muskeg. The picture on the right has much greater contrast and definition, and it's easy to know what you are looking at with just a glance. The photo on the right is a better fit for stormy clouds.

Neither of these photos includes a sky, yet both are sky-driven. The photo on the left was shot under light cloud cover, just after a rain. It's easy to see detail in the bright and dark areas of the picture, and the colors are deep and rich. The photo on the right was taken under direct sunlight. The highlights are very bright, the bright areas in the background are distracting, there is little detail in the shadows, and the colors are largely washed out.

Balance

“Balance is a composition technique that arranges elements within the frame to achieve equal visual weight across the image. The visual weight of an element essentially measures how much attraction it draws from the viewer. This is influenced by a number of factors, including contrast, color, size, proximity, placement, and texture.

“Visual weight is a powerful compositional tool used to determine the focal point of your image. But it’s also a double-edged sword, as it can make or break your shot. The easiest way to understanding balance in photography, is imagining your frame as a traditional scale. In order to achieve a visually appealing result, you’ll need to distribute your image’s elements on each side to make sure they both reach an equal visual weight.” – Wix Photography.

Balance is tricky for me, which is why I used an expert’s definition rather than providing my own. Lack of balance is one my more frequent mistakes.

I really wanted this scene to work. This petrified log was screaming for a good composition, but I could not quite find one. The lighting conditions were poor (midday cloudless sky), but the composition also failed. When the viewer looks at the photograph on the left, they first notice the petrified log, and then the bluff in the background, These two elements have the best-defined shape and contrast. But there are several problems with them. First, they are roughly equal size and contrast, so I have not shown the viewer which subject is more important to me. This creates tension between the two that is not needed. Sometimes tension between two similar subjects is warranted (and indeed, that tension is usually the purpose of the picture itself), but not here. The tension does not add anything to the scene. Second, both of these subjects are at the top of the image, and there is nothing of interest at the bottom. So what does the bottom of the picture contribute? Not much. If the foreground had been more interesting, or if it drew the viewer's gaze into the log (for instance, with an s-curve or leading lines), then the foreground would have added to the picture. Sadly, it did not, and this picture failed.

This photograph is actually similar to the one above in that they are both divided top/bottom. Here there are three subjects: the beams overhead, the walls below, and the ruins in the middle background. Because the ruins are in the middle of the picture, and are isolated by the sky around them, the ruins may draw the viewer's first attention. But that gaze quickly moves to the more interesting logs at the top of the picture. These logs are inversely balanced by the walls below, providing a sense of depth. The logs tilt up, the walls tilt down, and you can feel yourself walking between them. You could also make the case that the background ruins are balanced by the tree in the top right corner. For me, this picture works well while the petrified log picture does not.

Here is another fail that I really wanted to work. Despite the poor lighting conditions (again), this scene was stunning. I took this picture from a bluff overlooking the two cottonwoods, with a stream running through the sand and the beautiful bluffs in the background. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not capture the glory of that scene from my vantage point. There are several problems here, in addition to the lighting. First, like the picture of the petrified log, there is too much tension between the two main subjects. Notice the darkness and size of the bluff's shadow. This bluff was intended to be a secondary subject, with the tree being primary. However, the bluff shadow is so big and so dark that it dominates the picture, and we almost don't notice the tree in the bottom right. And while the bluff might be a beautiful primary subject in different lighting, it is simply a large black shadow on a cloudless synny day. Second, the photo is simply too busy. My desired primary subject is not large enough or distinct enough to separate it from the all of the shrubs in the foreground, or the bluffs in the background.

This image is balanced diagonally, rather than top to bottom or left to right. My intention here was to balance the tree on the bottom right with the bluff on the top left. But those same bad composition habits crept back in. The tree does indeed have a nice shape, but the tree is so small in the scene that we don't really notice its shape. The bluff meanwhile does not have a particularly interesting shape, yet it is the biggest element and has the strongest contrast. The tree gets lost and the bluff bores us. The resulting image: meh.

This scene, while similar to the one above, works much better. The mountain is interesting, but the boat and dock have even stronger shapes, contrast and leading lines. The mountain and its reflection accentuate the setting without distracting from the primary subject. As a result, you can almost feel yourself stepping out on the dock, with the beautiful mountains in the distance.

In this picture, the birdhouse is balanced against the dark branch in the top right corner. The birdhouse is the primary subject, and the branch at the top right creates a cozy canopy. In this way, the branch supports the birdhouse, rather than competing with it.

This one is a complete fail. I really wanted to do this site justice, but the sky did not cooperate, and my composition completely lacked balance. The main subject, while fascinating, sits heavy on the top left. But it does not interact at all with the rest of the image. There is nothing of interest on the bottom right. So the viewer's eye goes straight to the rock formation, and never moves off it. This means the rest of the image serves no real purpose.

Here is another lopsided composition. The cow is the most colorful and interesting element in the scene, and the heaviest part of the background sits directly behind it. The viewer's gaze immediately goes to the right half of the picture. But again, that leaves the left side completely devoid of focus or context, Notice that the cow is looking directly at us, and is not engaging with the left side of the scene.

This prairie dog is also perched on one side of the scene, with very little detail on the other half. But there is one big difference between this image and the cow picture above. The prairie dog is looking directly into the image towards the right. In this way, the subject is interacting with the rest of the image, or to be more precise, the subject is interacting with whatever is just beyond the right edge of the image. This leaves the viewer wondering what the prairie dog is looking at, which further engages the viewer with the scene.

In this image I was going for balance between the windmill blades and the small tree on the left. But when I composed the image, I missed an important consideration. The full windmill itself is balanced by the large empty space on the top left, which adds absolutely nothing to the image.

This is the same scene, but slightly later in the evening. Here I chose not to include the small tree on the bottom left. However, the sky has become much more articulated and dramatic. This creates a new balance betwen the windmill on the right and the stunning sky on the top left..

This picture does not balance subjects, but rather balances negative space (the leaves on the left) with positive space (the chair on the right). The leaves add context and context, without competing with the brightly colored well-defined chair.

High Dynamic Range

An important secondary consideration of direct sunlight is high dynamic range. Dynamic range refers to the difference in brightness between the darker parts of a picture (usually in the shadows) and the brighter parts of a picture (usually in direct sunlight). My eyes have the ability to see detail within a wide range of dark and bright areas, but my camera often does not (though technology improves every day). As a result, if I take a picture on a bright sunny day with part of the scene in shadow and part in bright sun, then often the resulting image will include either a bright washed out area with little detail, or a dark area with little detail, or both. The best way to combat this is to shoot High Dynamic Range photos. This little ticks involves taking at least three pictures (one that captures detail in the bright areas, one for the middle-tone areas, and one for the dark areas), and then editing them together into one picture. Some cameras or phones will do the editing for you, but I usually prefer to do it myself. If the range is not too extreme, you can also adjust highlights and shadows of a single image in Photoshop (or similar program).

Above are three photographs taken in quick succession using a tripod. The bridge is in direct sun, and the canyon is in shadow. Notice how the photo on the left captures detail in the darker areas, the one in the middle captures the midtones and sky, and the on the right captures the bright areas near the bridge. By combining the three, I was able to get the picture below.

Still, I was not entirely happy with this mage. First, the detail in the striations on the bottom left are not sharp enough. This is because I did not get sharp enough focus on that area in any of the three pictures. Second, the area around the bridge is still overblown losing important detail. This means I did not expose well enough for the brightest areas of the picture.

Here is another example. Between the three images, they capture all of the detail I need (brights, darks and sky). The resulting image still has a bright streak down the left side, but that streak retains the detail within it. Compare this to the image on the left above, where most of the detail in that streak is gone. This image does not have a central subject, but it makes an amazing Zoom background.

Here is an example of adjusting for high dynamic range in a single image by editing highlights and shadows in Adobe Lightroom, rather than by combining three separate images. The picture on the left clearly has detail in the bright and dark areas, they are just lost in the contrast. Since the detail was there to begin with, I just needed to bring it out through editing.

But sometimes, there is just no hope for reclamation. This is another scene I had high hopes for. I like the high walls of the arroyo curving into the scene, with the beautiful bluff in the background. But the midday cloudless sky did me no favors. No matter how I hard I tried, I could not get the scene or the resulting photograph to work for me. On bright days in the desert, pictures like this probably account for about half of my shots, and most end up in the delete pile.

Here is the same scene without the butte in the background, focusing instead on the curve of the arroyo. Even my usual midday tricks of cropping and converting to black and white could not save this scene. Sometimes it's just not there, or at least not within my skill level.

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