It’s 2020. I’m a photographer. And because of the omnipresence of smartphones, you’re a photographer, too. In reality, although we might have cameras and iPhones at our disposal, we aren’t really all photographers. It’d a bit like saying we’re all tv directors because of the number of streaming services (with or without the “chill”) we watch. Photography is about lights and shadows, and telling a story whilst provoking thought and emotion. On top of that, we can maximise our own capabilities, as well as that of our kit. Combining these things can help turn a photo of your average scene into something more meaningful and memorable.  

Some gains we make are quite marginal, but combined with a myriad of the right moves, you will soon see real progress. Here are a few notes as a general guide, and there are exceptions to these, of course! The technical guides are aimed at people using Adobe Lightroom or similar editing software.

1)    Indecent exposures – blowouts and blackouts

When taking a photo, you’re capturing light in that moment of time, called an exposure. Sometimes we let in too much light, and sometimes not enough. Luckily in the world of digital, we can fix this in post-processing (or post, for short), although it’s best to get the exposure right with your camera. Looking at the photo on the back of your camera isn’t always representative, because of the surrounding light. There have been countless times I’ve looked at the photo on the back and thought “oh, nice” only to see in post that it requires a lot of editing, because I under or overexposed.

 The light we let in is recorded on a histogram, which you can display on the back of your camera. Using editing software, we can see this histogram, too. The left-hand side consist of the blacks and shadows, with the right-hand side the highlights and whites. The middle ground is the midtones. In a perfect world, you’d have a quintessential bell-curve, or something resembling a camels’ hump. Sadly, the world ain’t perfect, so a good, even distribution of light captured could look like this;

If we haven’t let enough light in, we will underexpose our image and the histogram will be stacked to the left, like so;

If we overexpose, it will be stacked to the right. So, how do we collect the right amount of light and avoid blowouts and blackouts? When shooting, look for this little exposure metre on your screen, or in the viewfinder. Ideally, you want that dial to be hovering around the middle.

The short - the histogram is your guiding light to nailing a good exposure. Don’t trust the screen on the back of your camera!

2)    Framing and cropping

How do you ensure your image has a nice balance to it? Taking a nicely balanced photo is often achieved using the rule of thirds. This is where you would divide your photo into three horizontal and three vertical parts, creating nine areas within the frame. The intersection of these lines are often points of interest in the photo. Of course, rules are made to be broken etc. etc. but a solid photo often follows this rule.

For example, the below image from Key Summit has the tarn in the lower third, the mountains in the middle third and the sky in the upper third, roughly speaking. You don’t want to get too precise about it. I don’t think a photo has been ruined because it was 2-3% off the lines, but it’s a useful guide. 

You can use negative space, to complement the rule of thirds as well. Negative space is the area surrounding your points of interest. In the above image, the negative space would be the sky, which and the positive space the frozen tarn, beech trees and ice-capped mountains. You can also create a natural frame, by shooting through an object (E.g. trees or people) which has the added benefit of creating texture to the scene, whilst still observing the rule of thirds. The below image shows a person in the bush, framed by trees and branches.

When editing, we can also use the crop tool to reframe the image as necessary, trimming the fat, so to speak. Your digital camera collects a lot of detailed information, which gives you the luxury to crop in and achieve the image you desire.

The short - the combination of rule of thirds and negative space is a solid starting point for taking nicely balanced photos. If you don’t quite get it right, get your crop on in post

3)    What’s the point (of difference)?

When looking at a photo or taking one, I often think; will this photo be considered “good” in five years, 10 or even 20? Obviously, I lack a certain DeLorean, so I can’t forecast this. But I have strong feelings that clichés and social media trends should be avoided. Avoid them like the plague/cruise ships/being that toilet-paper hoarding weirdo in 2020. Dangling feet over the edge of a ledge? Looking out at the morning view from your tent? Wearing a felt hat in the middle of a landscape? They’re marketing trends more than photography ones and it’s hard to imagine any of these will stand the test of time. With tourism and the rise of Instagram, we tend to be drawn to the same spots on holiday and take similar photos to the last person who went there. Think Roys’ Peak and that fucking awful Wanaka Tree (note, it’s a willow, and invasive). These places are popular for a reason; they are beautiful. So, how can you make your image of these majestic landscapes a little different? Here’s an example from Milford Sound;

I’ve used a 50mm lens, which is a longer lens than most photos from this location. It enables a slight amount of zoom, providing more detail on Mitre Peak. I’ve shot through the glistening grass in the foreground, adding a bit of texture, without distracting too much from the jewel in the crown, which just happens to be (arguably) New Zealand’s own jewel in the landscape crown. It doesn’t necessarily mean this photo is better (or worse) than others taken there, it’s just different in a few ways.

The short - will your photo still be a good photo in years to come? Slow down and think what can make your photo a touch different

4)    Colour. Colour everywhere!

Colour is a wonderful thing that can bring a certain vibe/Mabo, but mainly “the vibe”, to photos. It’s something I’ve only got to understand properly in the last few years. The camera will capture an array of colours and tones based on your settings, with the chief influence being the white balance setting. You can change this before taking photos and in post, and it is measured along a Kelvin (K) temperature scale. You can also adjust the tint along a green and magenta scale, which I find works best in post. Generally speaking, photos will either look or warm or cool, with a green or magenta tint.

I used to get my colours wrong A LOT. What does that mean exactly? I didn’t understand colour grading. It’s quite subjective, but ultimately this is the process where you get your colours in order to present “the vibe” of the image. It’s pretty easy to make mistakes with and I’m still making plenty. The common scenes where this tends to happen involve the ocean, anything with trees, and the sky. It’s easy to see it done to an undesirable level in two fields I do a lot of work in; nature and astrophotography.

The colour problem usually falls under two categories; the wrong “flavour” and the wrong “family”. When it comes to hues, think of this as a flavour of a certain colour. For example, what kind of blue? Are we talking sky, ocean or baby? For yellow, is it daffodil, New York cab or lemon? And when we have an array of colours in an image, are they from the same “family”? A useful analogy to think of is the quintessential army soldier. Below is some guy named William who won a medal shaped in a cross for general bad-ass behaviour. The greens, browns and other colours match up, it’s fair to say they’re related and from the same family. It feels right. But imagine instead of the classic army green, his pants were lime green! That would be an example of the green being from the wrong family.

Here’s an extreme example of things being not quite how they should be;

This photo is of the Southland (NZ) coastline. With poor editing, the ocean now looks like that of Fiji and the sand looks like it’s from the Australian Outback. Strewth! It just doesn’t work. Wrong flavours and wrong family. Instead, if we get the colours more aligned, like;

It’s still a bit bland, but we get a more balanced and natural look. The flavours are a better match and they look more related, too. Colour editing is highly subjective, as people see colours differently and it depends what mood you’re trying to convey. Do we want the image to have a cold feel, considering when you took the image it was about to snow? Or do we want more warm notes, considering you took the photo in summer? You were there, you decide.

The short - get the flavours and families singing off the same songsheet

5)    Over-zealous editing

The section prior leads in nicely to the final point around overdoing it when it comes time to the edits. Editing is a big part of the photographic process. It lets you make worthwhile changes to your images like tweaking colours, cropping out distractions, and getting the exposure right to help achieve a certain look and feel. On the flipside, too much editing is like too much salt in your cooking, or the guy who wears too much cologne. It’s just not cricket and it looks a bit off at best, and unrealistic at worst, as though someone melted a box of crayons on your photo.

When you first use editing software, it’s pretty easy to get over-excited and push everything up to 11 and then beyond that. Saturation, contrast and clarity are the common culprits. There is often pushback around the idea of “too much editing” particularly when it comes to colours. It usually consists of “but creative license!” and my usual response to that is “yeah, well, zebras aren’t red”. There are limits to this.

The short - go easy on the sliders

So, that’s a first hoon on writing about photography. Are there other areas you’d like more of a rundown on? Comments away!