Nature Photography Section 2

Essential skills. I will just start off by saying not only did I not understand this section at all the first time. I’m also relatively certain that I did not have any of these skills at the beginning of the semester, since I actually get this section now. The histogram is a good place to start. I had seen it pop up on my pictures a thousand times before, but never knew what it was or how to use it. Now I know exactly what it is, and can look at a picture I took and know about how it is going to look. It is actually a very helpful feature, although I do not use it a whole lot.

The parts on metering, priority modes (and which to use), and exposure compensations make much more sense to me now that I have had it pounded into my head that my camera sees everything as fourteen percent grey. Reading light actually made sense the first time I read it, but I have started noticing light conditions when I am outside, not even taking pictures.

Depth of field is something important for pictures, and something I have been noticing in my pictures more and more. Hyper-focal distance is something I have not yet used, but still find interesting. Designing the photo to have blur in the background and foreground is an effect that I always like, and have worked more and more on doing in my own photos.

The other type of blur is motion effects, and as much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with Lorne, that purposely having moving animals blur just a little in photos looks bad and a lot like you messed up. I do like the rule for shutter speed, setting it to no less than the inverse of the lens length. I wish I had known that one before. The only blurred motion pictures I do like are those of running water. I think when done correctly, these pictures can look amazing.

Modifying natural light with reflectors and filters is something I have not done, but have come to see the importance of. Using reflectors to bounce light onto flowers or graduated filters to darken out the sky would have been very beneficial in a lot of my pictures. I can also see where using polarizing would be useful, though I have not tried that either. Things like color modifiers seem like they would be just as easy to do in Photoshop, but I suppose doing it that way could be considered cheating.

Now we have the most important section in the book: dominance. Red is more attractive than yellow, large draws more attention than small, light is more attractive than dark, and so on. And then of course there is the rule of thirds. This is something I always try to use. The other visual priorities are something I have started noticing in other people’s pictures as well as my own, but never notice when I am actually in the field taking pictures. I guess that is something I will have to work on.