Camera 102

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.