Photographs vs Snapshots: Three Ideas to Improve Your Images
The Art of the Image
Street scene in Aguas Calientes, Peru
Today I would like to share the second part of a three-part series on travel photography. As you may recall, the first part of this series dealt with the question of the camera itself. More specifically, do you need a camera, or can you get the results you want with a smartphone? I believe I made a compelling argument that most people can get perfectly acceptable results with their phones, especially if you have one of the more recent iPhones or Android Devices.
Regardless of what you use to take your photos (and its less important then you think), this second installment of my photography blog series will introduce some basic principles to help you get the most out of your images. The final installment (which I will publish in September) will deal with basic photo editing.
I’m going to share three ideas with you. If you are an experienced photographer, these simple ideas may seem trite, but as someone who has been practicing photography for 20 years, I can tell you that I still need to practice each of them. They are simple to explain but not always easy to implement. Some people would call them rules, but I think photography is an art form, and art doesn’t really have rules. Maybe we can refer to these ideas as “best practices”. Let's start with a potentially snobbish suggestion. I believe that there is a difference between a photograph and a snapshot. Its pretty simple. A snapshot is just a mechanical process of documenting a moment. You pull out your mobile device or camera. You set it to auto. You press the shutter and now you can prove to your friends that you were at the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. A photograph is different. In order to take a photograph, you need to stop and think. A photograph does more than document. It engages the viewer.
Best Practice 1: Create a balanced composition.
Start by picking a subject. Every photo needs a subject. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s a building. Maybe a flower, or a cat. Regardless of what it is, you should try to apply the rule of thirds. It’s a pretty simple concept. Think of your view as being overlayed by two vertical and two horizontal lines.
Now, place your subject on the lines, or even better..... on the intersections of the lines. See J. M. W. Turner’s painting The Fighting Temeraire below. The subject is obviously the ship. If you were the artist, would you have been tempted to place the ship in the center of the painting? It is the subject of the painting after all. Turner knew better though. In the simplest sense, the ship-in-tow now has space on the canvas to maneuver as it approaches you (the viewer). It may seem counterintuitive at first, but a subject too close to the center of the frame creates an unbalanced composition.
(I can’t move on without mentioning how much I love the above painting. Did you know that in 2005, it was selected as Britains’s favorite painting? On the canvas, the ship is being towed to the scrap yard. This was a great fighting ship that had participated in the British victory at Trafalgar. Note the setting sun on the right-third line representing the sun slowly setting on one of the Navy’s great epochs...... the age of sail.)
Best Practice 2: Tell a story.
Turner does this so effectively above. As a traveler, you have so many opportunities to tell stories. When I say story, I am not necessarily referring to a complex narrative. What I mean to say is that a ship is just a ship. What makes the painting above meaningful is that it expresses something about the ship. Let's take a look at the portrait below of Theodore Roosevelt (taken in 1903).
What a beautiful photograph. If I asked you, “What is this photo of?" you would say “Roosevelt”, and you would be right. But of course, we both know that it is really a photograph of something else. It is about who Roosevelt was, or at least who he imagined himself to be. Every detail adds to the narrative. Note the illumination on the western portion of the United States on the map. The west was the future. It was destiny, and Roosevelt (as he stares out at an unseen horizon even beyond our own borders) envisioned this future. A simple head and shoulders photo might have gotten the job done, but it would not have told a story
I don’t want to drift too far off subject here. Lets get back to you, and you taking a photo of your subject. Perhaps its a wine bottle. What is it about the wine bottle that you want your viewer to know? Chances are, it is related to the environment. What’s next to the bottle? What’s behind the bottle? How do those things give the viewer context? My photo below tells the story of what happened to the wine bottle. :)
Best Practice 3: Don’t fight the light.
The word photography came from Greek roots and can be translated as “painting with light”. Technically, all you are doing when you take a photograph is capturing light. The message here is relatively simple. Unless you are using a flash (which I normally do not while traveling), you cannot control the light itself. You cannot control the intensity and you cannot control the angle upon which it is striking your subject. So what does this mean? It means that you are the one that has to move in order to find an angle where the light is doing what you want it to do. Where do you think the sun was (relative to the photographer) in the photo below?
Yes, it was behind me. Because it was behind me, the photo has clear colors, contrast, and clarity. Here’s another experiment. I’ll just walk into my backyard and take two snapshots of our patio with my iPhone.
Obviously, these photos were taken from two different angles. In the first photo, the sun was in front of me. In the second, the sun was behind me. Can you see the difference? When the sun is behind me, my subjects pop. They have clear color, and the image surfaces have contrast. In the first image, where I am “fighting the sun”, the colors are washed out. It took me 10 seconds to walk to a different angle.
So when you travel, will you be able to take all of your photos with the sun behind you? Of course not. Sometimes you are just stuck with the light that you have. But in most cases, you can move and find a better angle. You can practice this simply by starting to pay attention to light. When you are outside or driving around, ask yourself, where is the good light right now? Is it to my left? My right? Is it behind me? Where do I see color and contrast? This seems simple, but I see so many unnecessarily washed out travel photos.
One final note about light. If you have an overcast day, don't despair. It provides great opportunity for you, because this diffused light is not harsh. It tends to be even, allowing you to take photos from angles that would not have been available to you if the sun were shining brightly. So next time you wake up on your vacation to a cloudy day, you can celebrate!
CONCLUSION
OK. Those were the three ideas I wanted to share. Lets review:
Think about your composition. Choose a subject and locate it in the image according to the rule of thirds.
Take pictures about things. Not of things. Include enough of the subject's environment so that you can tell the story. (I am the worst at this most of the time.)
Don’t fight the light. Use it to your advantage when you can.
And now, of course, I have to tell you that no great advances were ever made in art without artists that were willing to break the rules. So have fun, and please share your travel photographs with me. I’d love to see your stories.
