Shooting Great Pictures at Home
July 14, 2009 by Eastmon Admin
Filed under Beginners Tips, Featured Tips, Landscape Photography, Macro Photography, Photography Tips
By guest contributor Peter Langston (Lango)
The view from the Tamworth lookout is spectacular but like most scenic views, once you’ve seen it … unless it’s the start of the day and a dense fog is just clearing and you catch the morning flight from Sydney on its final approach. This was shot on my Canon 50D EOS in AV mode, mounted on a Slik Pro500DX tripod at f5.6, 1/1000sec and 100 ISO with the 18-200mm lens set to 135mm and picture style on landscape.
I’ve travelled a fair portion of Australia, with only Tasmania and the tropical north of Qld still escaping my lens and it would be a reasonable assumption that whilst all of those kilometres enveloped me in their protection from all things “back home”, they also gave me opportunities to take some spectacular photographs.
The assumption could therefore be, that to get great photos you have to have subjects and scenery from far flung places. An unwise hypothesis however, because it’s not true. Just as Dorothy explained to Auntie Em, “there’s no place like home”.
The problem to overcome is, home is so familiar. Even the keenest eye can miss a great opportunity if it looks through the glasses of habit we all wear when we drive the kids to school or head home from work. We pass that grove of trees every day at the same time but did you ever stop to wonder what they look like at another time of day? We’ve all seen the view from the town lookout but have you seen it at sunset, during a thunderstorm or when it’s foggy.
The other evil we are guilty of is keeping the camera in a safe place – the cupboard, the study, the top shelf, in the ubiquitous corner … but how often are you in those places? For this “great shot thing” to work, the camera and you have to get it together and that starts from being together. Keep you camera with you.
Imagine I can change your thinking and you start to believe that something spectacular is waiting for you somewhere, perhaps even within walking distance of home. If I send you a sign, how will you know where it points? Well, you know all there is to know about where you live but start to think of the same places at different times of the day (light) and in different perspective (angles and size). What should you look for? Changes in light … early morning or late afternoon especially when everything turns golden in the last hour of the day. Changes in weather conditions … thunderstorms, fogs, frosts, wind. Changes in circumstance … high clouds and a sunset are always good but so are construction sites, schools, traffic, animals etc, etc.
A sunset is a sunset right? After shooting a series of shots for a wide stitch sunset just south of Tamworth among the farmland, I closed in on the fence line and using a shallow depth of field I let the colour of the background do the talking and kept the barbed wire in sharp focus. This was shot on my Canon 50D EOS in AV mode hand held at f5.6, 1/2000sec and 1000 ISO with the 18-200mm lens set to 180mm and picture style on landscape.
A few composition basics in shot making might help, like the rule of thirds, not placing the horizon in the centre of the vertical axis, making sure lines lead you into a picture, looking for points that form triangles in the shot and seeking to shoot familiar places from unfamiliar vantage angles. While you’re wandering in cyberspace, Google “photo composition” for some more handy hints.
Sunrise can be tricky without filters but shooting objects lit by the sun can be good fun. Add in a clear frosty morning and the effects can be beautiful. Here a single barb on a wire fence is coloured by the rising sun and the frost which still clings to its dark side. Again, a shallow depth of field gave a lovely almost paisley mix of colour as a background. This was shot on my Canon 50D EOS in AV mode, mounted on a Slik Pro500DX tripod at f5.6, 1/50sec and 100 ISO with the 18-200mm lens set to 120mm and picture style on standard.
One I pinched from my daughter is to tighten your zoom beyond the normal shot and shoot fragments of subjects in such a way that the viewer will still recognise them but the tighter shot makes the viewer more aware of component parts. Fragments can be fascinating. Fill you lens with the smallest scenes.
Here in lies the great advantage of digital … it costs nothing to experiment. Your laboratory is all around you and won’t cost you an airfare to reach so start snapping.
And then I opened the curtains one morning and … when to avoid colour and just let contrasts and light do the work? This was just after sunrise one morning and I was on my way to boil the jug but this scene distracted me. After several snaps in colour, I switched over to monochrome for a comparison (always a good thing to do in extreme lighting conditions). It had rained overnight and a deep fog was slowly giving way to the rising sun. This was shot on my Canon 50D EOS in manual mode, handheld at f8, 1/60sec and 100 ISO with the 18-200mm lens set to wide angle at 18mm and picture style on monochrome.
Lango has contributed several articles with tips to improve your photography, read more about him here and on facebook. Lango is a customer of the Eastmon Tamworth store.
Lango’s Bio
I’m a writer essentially, who loves to take photos. Poetry is my favourite form of written expression and I see a strong parallel with photography – both are about using economy in expressing a moment.
My wife and I have traveled to most parts of Australia to gather experiences we can’t find at work or the shops or the local pub. In the process we found what we left behind but with different geography as a backdrop.
I’ve been a teacher, a cricketer, a family man and a mate – with many other side tracks along the way – but people remain my fascination.
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