Digital Photography

Are all the photographs you take a work of art? I submit that they are not. However, there most certainly are photographs that are works of art. I have looked at the famous photographs of Ansel Adams and others from the golden era of photography that had the ability to capture, in an instant, an image that lasts forever. I once saw an exhibit of Adams’ iconic image of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” with several renditions of the photo as developed by Adams over the years. Each image was slightly different, but each showed the haunting beauty of a cemetery in a New Mexican village with the moon illuminating the scene. Sometimes he dodged or burned the clouds and the light on the crosses one way and sometimes in another way, but he always delivered beauty to the print.

While you or I may never take a picture that is as good as those of Ansel Adams, we can all strive to capture the light in the camera and develop it in a way that touches the heart of the viewer. Our goal should be to take a photograph that elicits a visceral feeling in the viewer. So, how do we turn a mere snapshot into a work of art?

A photograph starts long before you click the shutter.

I believe you have to see the photograph in your mind before you even take the camera out of the bag. You need to walk around the scene. Try to visualize the photograph, looking at the subject from different angles, positioning your vantage point up and down-from kneeling on the ground to climbing a tree or ladder. Move around the scene to see what is in the background and the foreground. Move fifty feet to the left or right to see if the image “pops” in your field of vision.

Use other tools to help you prepare the shot. I have an application on my iPhone that tells me when the moon will rise and set and the various phases of the moon. Often times, I consult this application, even before I go out, to determine the best day and/or time of day to shoot. I have another iPhone application that marks the waypoint (the precise location) of my location. I use this waypoint to encode the photo with the longitude and latitude so the exact place I was standing can be located later on Google Earth.

Let there be light

It is commonly understood that there are only two really great times of day to take photographs. These are the times around sunrise and sunset and are referred to as the “Golden Hour.” Some photographers refine that time down to about ten minutes of perfect light with the sun low on the horizon. You will often see a golden glow in photographs taken at these times of day. The scene and the location will dictate when the light is perfect. If you are in a mountain canyon, light may not shine on the trees until later in the morning. You may have to wait for the light to arrive at a particular part of your scene or to light up specific parts or your scene, such as leaves on a tree.

Of course, some rules are made to be broken. Some of my best shots have occurred when the sun crept from behind a cloud to illuminate my scene.

Many times the photograph you think you took can look quite a bit different when viewed on the large screen and sometimes there is something in the background or foreground that spoils your intended shot. However, once in a great while, you may see something of greatness that was not apparent in the viewfinder, but was captured in your image. I once took photos of a tennis match where the player was moving very fast as I was shooting on automatic and did not not see, until later, that I had captured the strain in his face with bulging veins in his neck looking like they were about to burst. On further inspection, I realized that it was not the movement of the ball, but the intensity of the players swing coupled with the lines and sweat on his face that created the magic in the image.

After visualizing your scene, then proceed to take your camera out of its bag, attach it to the tripod, set the shutter speed and f stop and then trip the shutter. And that is how you create a photograph that is much more than just a snapshot.

By Randy K Jackson