You’ve all seen the photography. Some pictures have clicked with you and some have not. At some point you’ve might have wondered, ‘why did he do that?’ This ongoing series of Creative Decisions will give you a look into my mind as I go through the steps from start to finish making sure to point out the different basic photography tips and tricks I use.
First in the series is one of my more recent shots, ‘Winter Color.’ It was taken from inside my (parents) house of a scene just outside the rear window, the bird feeder, using a 200mm Canon lens. That just goes to show you that you can find an interesting picture almost anywhere, even in your own back yard.
This shot was actually just one of about a dozen pictures I took. Waiting for just that right pose, a clear side profile, and getting it at just the right angle so that branches were at a minimum was the hardest part. Wild animals don’t listen to cues from the photographer so timing and patience was everything.
So here is the picture before anything was done to it. Quite different, isn’t it? There’s color, the size is different, and it feels kind of flat.
My first major decision was cropping (changing the pictures size and shape). I wanted to include some of the branches and background but not too much as that would be distracting. My main focus was the bird and leaving it at such a wide angle means ‘he’ gets lost in everything else.
As I went through and cropped the picture I also kept in mind the Rule of Thirds, main subject just off center of one of the points of focus. Also, since the bird was looking off to the left I also wanted to keep some dynamic space to make the viewer wonder what the cardinal was looking at.
My next major decision was a difficult one. I liked the background colors. They had a warm and lively feel to them but the more I stared at the photograph the more I realized they distracted from the theme I had in mind, cold winter with a bit of color. As the picture was, the bird got lost in the browns, blues and greens surrounding it.
I tried multiple variations of background color strength but nothing seemed to click, until saturation (amount of color) went to zero. The black and red clashed against each other like sword on shield and the slashes of white gave it a cold feel. My ‘Winter Color’ was taking form.
From there it was just a series of Photoshop adjustments that brought the contrast to where I wanted it and sharpened (brought more into focus) a few blurry edges.
Start to finish I had to keep in mind what the message I wanted to get across was. That isn’t to say that along the way nothing changed, but the key was to focus on that idea and to keep the clutter out in order to show the viewer what I wanted them to see.
Questions, comments, let me know.
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I’m the kind of guy who snaps a picture and leaves it as it is. But I can certainly recognize what you can do with photoshop to enhance the picture. Good job!