Tag Archives: harbour

Flaw into a feature

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I was thinking back over the last year or so and I noticed that most of my top photos (in terms of views) have all been from “random” shots. I mean those “spur of the moment” ones, where you have the camera on you and you see something interesting. I do go on a lot of planned outings and these are worthwhile too. But there is something to ne said for keeping your eyes open, ready to pounce.

These days most cell phones have great cameras as well and these can be all you need. The key I think is to be intentional and keep on looking. So, here I am a passenger on the way to the city and of course I’€™ve got my DSLR with me! The harbour looked peaceful after the storm. I only had a few seconds to get this…. My shutter speed wasn’t really fast enough; there was a little motion blur in the capture.

I learnt this technique a long time ago – take a flaw and make it a feature. In this image that meant increase the glow or blur and make it a bit more mysterious…. Did it work? I think so!Wellington Harbour, New Zealand

These tools helped me work the magic:

Dead Centre?

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The spelling of the word centre needs its own blog post!

Composition is one of those things that can make or break a picture. To my mind it doesn’t just happen; you understand and follow the “rules” to create that photo that sticks out. And not in a kind of sore thumb way either!

For me I want to get comspostion right in the camera and at he most just crop in post. You can fix some glitches in Photoshop but that’s not a good pattern to rely on.  A good guideline is to avoid placing elements in the centre of the frame or has Rick Sammon says; “dead center is deadly”. (He is American so I used that spelling!)  I’m not sure if this photo breaks that rukeyser or not but I like to keep the sun in the centre of the horizontal plane sometimes. I feel it draws the view up, through the image, in a kind of “hopeful” way. There needs to be some kind of refection or flare below for this to work.

I suppose the lesson here is that we should be aware of compositional rules and knowing break them. In this case I see it as balancing rather than breaking.

Have a look on my gallery and you see more examples of this kind of image.

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These tools helped me work the magic:

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