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How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

07 Sep

How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images - dandelion bright

With hundreds of thousands of photographers out shooting, how do you distinguish yourself from the pack? How do you repeatedly come home with images that make audiences everywhere gasp? One way is to use a more unique, dramatic style – backlight.

But how do you do this? In fact, it’s rather simple.

In this tutorial, you’ll find a sequence of steps for working with backlight. When you’re finished reading, you’ll have the know-how necessary to take incredible backlit photographs that everyone will love.

backlit flower - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

Step 1: Shoot early or late in the day

Backlight refers to a lighting situation when the light comes from directly behind the subject.

How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images - yellow flower and bokeh

A backlit Black-Eyed Susan.

Because backlit photography requires such a specific lighting angle, it can only be done when the sun is low in the sky. This means photographing early or late in the day.

Too early in the afternoon and the sun won’t offer much directional light. For dramatic backlighting, the sun needs to point across (and into the eyes of the photographer). But during midday, the sun points down.

Also, the golden quality of the light during morning and evening makes for a much more pleasing backlit images.

snow close up - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

I photographed this backlit snow late in the evening.

Step 2: Find a distinct subject

The subject is the focal point of your image. It is what you want to stand out, what you want to emphasize in your photograph.

interesting flower shape - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

The best subjects have distinct outlines. That is, they don’t overlap with other elements in the photograph.

A mishmash of trees? Not the greatest subject for a backlight photograph. The trees will all blend together, creating a load of messy shadows.

A single tree against the sky? Now you’re off to a great start.

Step 3: Get low

Once you’ve found your subject, it’s time to begin actually composing your image.

As mentioned above, the best backlight compositions have a distinct subject. But even if you have a relatively distinct subject, it’s important to work to further isolate your subject so that you get the strongest backlit photograph possible.

One way to isolate your subject is by getting down low.

dandelion seedhead - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

I took this photograph of a dandelion seedhead while lying on the ground. Getting down so low allowed me to isolate the individual seeds.

When you crouch, kneel or even lie on the ground, you change your perspective. Your subject seems to rise into the sky, framed against the bright sky.

This is exactly what you want. A darker subject against a brighter sky is a perfect start to a stunning backlight photograph that you can be proud of.

Step 4: Choose where to put the sun

I have a straightforward recommendation when it comes to backlit photography. That is not to include the sun in the frame.

If you do include the sun, nine times out of ten you’ll find yourself with a bright white blob in your image. That is not very photogenic at all.

Instead, try to place the sun just outside the frame. This way, you’ll still have a brilliant brightness in the sky—which I love to have in my backlight photography—without it being overpowering.

close up of tree bark - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

The sun is just outside the frame of this tree photograph.

You can also place the sun behind your main subject. This is another effective technique for hiding the sun while getting the full force of a brilliant sky.

Step 5: Expose with the main subject in mind

Exposure refers to the level of brightness in the image. In backlight photography, I recommend exposing the image in one of two ways.

First, you can create a silhouette.

flower silhouette - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

I captured this near silhouette in the late evening.

In order to do this, start by exposing for the bright sky. That is, dial back the brightness of the image so that the sky itself has some nice detail in it. If there are clouds in the sky, you should be able to see them in your image.

silhouette and bokeh of a flower - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

Because the sky is naturally so bright, dialing back the exposure will make your main subject dark, which is exactly what you want. After this, it’s a matter of tweaking the exposure to get the exact effect you’re looking for.

Second, you can expose for the main subject.

Personally, I prefer this form of backlight photography. I like to keep some detail in the main subject, while also getting that beautiful backlit glow.

white flower - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

Here, I was careful to make sure this flower photograph was light enough.

For this type of photography, I start by making sure the exposure is light enough that I can see the main subject. I don’t let it get too bright, because then the sky becomes overpowering.

Of course, feel free to take a few images and experiment with the exposure. Slightly different levels of brightness will give your photographs subtly different moods, so make sure to shoot the scene in several different ways!

In Conclusion

Creating unique images can be difficult. But by using backlight in your photographs, you’ll be able to take incredible images that will impress even the best photographers. Just be sure to shoot when the sun is low in the sky. Make sure you find a distinct subject. Place the sun out of the frame. Finally, be sure to carefully choose the brightness of your image.

Have any other tips for shooting in backlight? Let me know in the comments below.

purple flower close up - How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

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4 Tips for Photographing Fog to Create Mystical Images

31 Aug

There’s nothing that I’ve seen so far that compares to the ethereal and mystical beauty of capturing long exposure and photographing fog. There’s something so compelling about the soft silky texture that results from it. So much so, that photographers all over the world are constantly chasing it.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

In fact, where I live in the Bay Area, we call these people “fog-chasers,” and they spend their days in popular local spots waiting for it to make an appearance just so that they capture this mystical geological phenomenon. The fog can create mystique and drama. It can add mood, be a soft blanket over a scene, a floor, or a wall. It can take many forms in shapes and create some very compelling photographs.

The main challenges in capturing these fog shots are:

Focus issues for getting a sharp image.
Preventing camera shake.
Preparing for the shot.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

Tip 1 – Finding the fog

This is the most challenging aspect of doing this type of shot since as a photographer you, unfortunately, have no control over the weather. So, what I do is scour the web for weather sites that can provide me with the information I need.

I also check out the weather on the local news religiously as well as follow weathermen on Twitter and Facebook. Once the word is out that fog is on its way, webcams are the best way to monitor it on the day you want to shoot. You can see what the fog looks like and if it’ll be cooperative for the type of shot you have in mind.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

Tip 2 – Composition

Fog, in general, has a way of turning an ordinary scene into something spectacular. For fog waves, wide landscapes with forest treetops make an interesting subject. So do iconic structures or monuments.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

Here in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge is a local favorite. At certain times during the year, the fog gets so low that it flows beneath the arches. It serves as the perfect opportunity to cream a soft blanket from these types of long exposures.

Another local favorite is Mount Tamalpais, which consists of long ranges of hills adorned with redwood trees. The way the fog flows over the treetops creates these spectacular waves as it flows through the peak’s ridges.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog - Golden Gate bridge in the fog

Tip 3 – Use an ND Filter

Neutral Density filters are an absolute necessity for smoothing out fog and making it appear almost silk-like. The time of day will dictate the density of the filter needed. If it’s bright daylight out you’ll need something quite dark while if you’re shooting at twilight you’ll need something lighter or you may not need a filter at all.

When using an ND filter, make sure to first set up your shot using autofocus, without the filter. Then set the camera to manual focus and add the filter. This way you’ll assure the proper focus for your shot. Alternatively, you can also use back button focus.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

Most of the time if the filter is too dark the camera will not be able to focus on a specific focal point. Also, because fog is a moving entity and puts a veil on any element in your composition the camera’s autofocus will most likely fail. Fear not and simply find something in the frame that’s sharp enough to focus on, then lock focus on that spot.

Tip 4 – Experiment with shutter speed

There are two types of fog shots that be taken from the techniques above that will produce different results based on your shutter speed.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

A shorter shutter speed will give the fog more texture while a longer exposure will make it look silkier and smoother. You’ll need to experiment to see what looks better to you. Sometimes keeping the shutter open too long will result in the fog looking too messy and it could lose its lines and consistency.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these tips are helpful and will inspire you to get out there and experiment photography fog. The most difficult aspect of this type of photography is first finding it, then capturing it in a way that’ll showcase it as well as the scene it should be complementing.

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

In order to achieve this ND filters will help you soften the fog flow and turn it into waves. After that experimenting with shutter speeds will create various results.

In the end, it’s your aesthetic as the photographer that will dictate what is most pleasing to you. I hope that the photos that I’ve captured from the years of shooting the fog will inspire and get you on your way to becoming a fog chaser too!

4 Tips for Photographing Fog

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How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

11 Aug

If your ideas are more than a photo, why not combine two or three of them in a single image? When you want to create something surreal, ghostly or that is just beyond what you can capture in a single shot, then the multiple exposure effect is the thing for you!

This effect comes from analog photography and some digital cameras offer this feature as well. However, we can mimic the multiple exposure effect not only without film and even without a camera, so let’s get creative in Photoshop!

How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Achieving double or multiple exposures in-camera means that you have to do your photos in a sequence, this can be very impractical and therefore limits your creativity.

In Photoshop, you can combine a photo you took today with your smartphone with another one that you made last year with your camera or even add a Creative Commons photo that you found online, so let your imagination go wild!

Method Two – Creating Double Exposures in Photoshop

If you need to kickstart your creativity, try playing with opposites or contrasting concepts. To demonstrate, I’m going to use urban versus nature, I’ll also show the practicality of doing this in Photoshop instead of running back and forth from the countryside to the city, so let’s get started.

First open your first image, the one that will be the base on which you’ll compose your image. When the image opens it is the background layer which is locked. You can always change this but for now, it’s fine to leave it as is.

Duplicate your image by going to Menu > Layer > Duplicate Layer or just click and drag it into the Create New Layer button on the bottom of the Layers panel (or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+J). Now you have two identical images on top of each other, one in each layer.

duplicate layer - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Add your second image

Now drag and drop the second image onto your canvas. I suggest you use this technique instead of copy and paste because this way it gets added as a Smart Object. Therefore you can make it bigger or smaller as many times as you want without losing image quality.

This is always a good thing to have but especially for this exercise since you still need the other photo(s) to see how they will interact to create the final composition. Then click OK and it will be added as a layer. By default it will be dropped on the top, so you won’t be able to see the other image for the moment, but that’s normal.

drag and drop second image - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Click on the layer you just added, the one with the second image, and drag it down so that it’s between the two previously existing layers. Now all you see is the first image again and the new image is hidden, Don’t worry, we’ll get to it in a moment.

Adjust the Blend Mode

The top layer should now be the copy of your background, click on it to select it. Now open the drop-down menu from the top of the Layer panel which contains the Blending options. Select Screen Mode and as a result, you’ll see a mixture of the two images.

Keep in mind that the results will change drastically depending on the colors of your images as this information is what Photoshop uses to make them interact.

For example, with black, it leaves the colors unchanged while screening with white produces white. In any case, don’t worry if your image doesn’t look like the example I’m using.

screen mode - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Adjust to your liking

The result you’re looking for is rarely achieved by just doing this, so click on the layer that contains your second image, and modify it until you’re happy.

You can change its size by going to Menu > Edit > Transform. Then drag it with the Move tool from the top of the Toolbox. Add some filters by going into Menu > Filters or adjust its settings by adding Adjustment layers by clicking on the button from the bottom of the panel. Play with it until you’re satisfied.

transform - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Mask out unwanted bits

Once you’ve decided on the final image position, create a layer mask on that layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the panel. Making sure that the mask is selected, use your Brush tool to paint in black in the areas where you don’t want the image showing.

It behaves like an eraser but without actually losing your pixels. That’s the great thing about masks, it just hides things. If you make a mistake all you need to do is change the brush to white and paint it back in.

layer mask - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Repeat the process with as many photos as you want to add. If you don’t want one image to be predominant but instead you want to have a blank canvas on which to put many smaller pieces, first open a blank canvas that will be your “negative” where you are going to combine your images.

You can do this by going to Menu > File > New and just set the size and resolution that you want and click OK. Then follow the steps above normally. Have fun!

final image #1 - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

A Trendy Twist, Method Two

As many vintage things, double exposures made a comeback and became trendy just by adding a little twist to it. You’ve probably often seen images of multiple exposures that are silhouettes with the second image inside it. Here’s how you can do that with the same technique as before just by adding one more step.

So, open your first image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer once again. On this copy, select your background with the tool of your choice depending on your image.

If you have a white background you can quickly select it with the Magic Wand while a more busy background might require the Pen tool or a mix of different ones.

selection - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Once you have your background selected then go to Menu > Edit > Fill, choose white and click OK. Drag and drop your second image just like you did in the first part of this tutorial so that it becomes a new layer. Drag it and put it in between the background and the background copy you created.

layer order - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Now it’s totally covered, so click on the background copy to select that layer and change its blend mode to Screen.

result #2 - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

Modify your second image and create a layer mask to paint with black whichever you don’t want in the composition and that’s it.

black and white - How to Create a Multiple Exposure Effect in Photoshop

You can use images with a lot of contrast or monochrome to create different effects. Try them out and share your results with us in the comment section below.

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How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Portraits

08 Aug

We’ve all seen the usual studio set up – beautifully crisp white light, maybe some strobes, diffusers, and other things of the sort. However, what can you do beyond that to make your portraits stand out? Add some color! In this article, learn how to use colored gels to add some spice to your images.

musician portrait with pink background - How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Lighting

Colored gels are filters that go on your light in order to change the output color. They are usually sold at photography stores and clamped onto your lights. They range in size, thickness, color cast, and most importantly, price. Be very mindful of how hot your lights are because we’ve had gels melt on the set before during long sessions (such as music videos).

However, you can also make your own colored gels using cellophane and tape. Just take some really saturated cellophane from a local party or art store and wrap them around your softbox or LED light (so long as the LED runs cold and won’t melt the plastic paper) and fasten with tape.

This may not look like the most professional setup, but I suppose that matters little so long as the final outcome is fantastic!

spooky photo with double exposures - How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Lighting

There are limitless possibilities with gels. In regard to color combinations, I suggest making sure all of your gels are saturated the same in order to match with one another (and not become a headache in the editing room later).

Here are some of my favorite gel lighting arrangements to create some new and unique imagery. As a personal preference, I use continuous light, but the same can be achieved with studio strobes or speedlights.

One Color Gel Setup

The simplest and most traditional gel lighting look. There isn’t any fancy setup for this look, you can photograph your model in any fashion and just replace the white light with a color. Make sure your colored gel is really vibrant or the image may fall flat.

Play with distance, shutter speed, and some light post-processing to see how far you can get the light to spread. That can add a unique and unexpected twist to your one-light setup!

A good use of the one color set up is backlighting! Take your light and place it behind the subject.

Double Colored Gel Setup

My personal favorite is the double colored gel setup. All this requires is two lights, each gelled with different colors. Set them to the side of your model and watch the magic happen!

The division can be very eye-catching and intriguing.

lighting diagram - How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Lighting

Be mindful of your model’s physical structure. You want to make sure that the color division hits the proper place. Aim for the lighting to (generally) divide right at the center of the nose (split lighting).

Tri-Color Gel Setup

You can go as intense with colors as you like, but when I do three color looks, I like one of those colors to be white. The white softens the whole look and doesn’t make it overly exaggerated.

However, if you prefer a color, I suggest placing a lighter color in the center of your arrangement and the darker colors on the sides.

For three color looks, my favorite arrangement is the traditional triangle light setup. This includes one light in front of the subject and two lights at the sides.

Depending on the look you want to achieve, you can set up the two side lights behind the model and just turn them towards the model. That keeps the light from being too harsh. For a more intense look, place the lights directly at the model’s sides.

Rim Light Colored Gel Setup

Always a very dramatic and edgy look, using gels for rim lights can bring a bit of flair to your portraits. It does depend on your model’s structure as to where you place the lights. What I do is set up a white light in front of the model and two colored gels on lights to the side pointed forward.

The best colors I’ve found for the rim light look are purples, blues, reds, and greens – oranges tend to get a bit lost with the white light.

Background Light Gel Setup

The quickest way to liven up any location is to aim some lights with colored gels attached toward the background wall.

You can photograph your subject in any traditional studio light manner, and just shoot two gelled lights to the back wall. This allows your subject to be really well separated from the background (something we always strive for in studio photography).

How to use Colored Gels to Create Unique and Creative Lighting

Now go out there and play with colors!

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How to Create a Luminous Look for Your Photographs

19 Jul

Today let’s talk about one of the final processes of creating an artful image. Let’s talk about THE LOOK. This refers to the overall feeling your images projects to a viewer. This look is often created during post-production here in the digital age, or it can be created in camera. Either way, the final look and feel of your image are just as important as all the technical requirements that went into the initial exposure.

Create a Luminous Look - tide on the beach

In this case, a soft focus was added in post-processing to help lighten the image.

There are lots of different looks that you can create with your images, everything from a bleached look to something with super rich colors. There’s also the hyper-realistic style where you process your work to create a gritty look. Today though we’re going to focus on the luminous look.

Defining the Luminous Look

To fully understand the luminous look lets start with a full understanding of the characteristics of a photograph that looks and feels luminous. Dictionary.com defines the word luminous in the following way:

Adjective

Radiating or reflecting light; shining; bright.
Lighted up or illuminated; well-lighted: the luminous ballroom.
Brilliant intellectually; enlightened or enlightening, as a writer or a writer’s works: a luminous concept; luminous prose.

This means one of the main focuses when creating a luminous photograph is to consider the feeling the light will create in the image.

Luminous could mean the image glows. This means it feels like the light seeps from the image out towards the viewer. The best way to achieve this look is to shoot towards the light source. The goal is to make the light central to the look and feel of the image.

You will notice that there are still dark areas that contrast with all of the light. This is important. The goal is not to wash out the image but to create that feeling of all-around soft bright light.

Glowing

Let’s study the following images to understand how one creates a glowing, luminous look and feel within a photograph. Below is the initial photograph, unprocessed. The RAW image was shot in a local forest. I was attracted to the soft light coming through the forest that illuminated this tiny spring flower.

This was shot at 1/80th, f/5.6, ISO 1000.

In post-processing, several elements were slightly adjusted. In the image below the highlights were enhanced and the exposure was raised a little. The tones were also warmed. All adjustments were completed in Lightroom. The goal was to make it feel as if the light permeated the scene with warmth.

Create a Luminous Look - spring flower with warmer tones

After processing – notice how much lighter and airier the image is now.

The second image was edited using the Nik Efex software from Google. I love their analog looks. I chose a preset then made some adjustments to the image, controlling the brightness and the amount of vignette in the image. A matte feel was also added to this second version.

Processing using Nik Efex.

The essential concept when creating an image that has a luminous glowing feeling is to ensure that the light softly reaches all corners of the image.

Using Fog and Mist

Another way to create a luminous look is to take advantage of fog and mist. Photographs shot in their natural conditions won’t glow in the same way but the luminous look can be achieved when shooting in foggy conditions. The fog softens the view and can make the viewer feel as if the scene is still filled with light.

In the case of the image below, the fog and the mist completely obscured our view of the countryside. The entire top of the mountain, however, glowed with a diffused light. The 2km hike straight up the side of the mountain was still worth it for the ghostly quiet we experienced while standing on one of the highest peaks in Wales.

Create a Luminous Look - mountain top in the fog

Pen-y-Fan is one of the highest mountains in Wales and the view from the top is supposed to be spectacular. Our grueling hike to the top did not reveal expansive views but rather this eerily silence. It was still worth the effort.

The Miky Look

A third way to create a luminous look is to process an image so that it feels milky in nature. These means that post-processing produces a softer feeling image that doesn’t necessarily contain brightness or dark contrasts but rather one that feels soft and light but muted.

Here’s the original unedited image. The soft muted colors and the fog are elements that will help to achieve the milky look. Strong contrasts and bright bold colors do not lend themselves to creating this style.

The deserted beaches around Borth, Wales were a perfect spot for shooting images with soft gentle tones.

To process the image and complete the milky look I used warmer tones, adjusted the vignette, and lightened the corners of the image. I used a faded film preset and gave the whole image a light greenish tone. Then, I adjusted the haze slider in Lightroom. I wanted the whole image to feel very light but also very soft.

Processed for a milky, almost retro look.

Using Lens Flare

One final technique to consider is the use of lens flare to help create images that look and feel luminous. Lens flare is one of my favorite techniques to use in experiments. I love the effect of so much light permeating the image and also the unique shapes created as the light refracts in your camera.

The following images are all floral in nature but the light is refracted in each image in different ways. In some cases, it’s the shape of the bokeh in other cases it’s lens flare.

Perhaps this image is more about the bokeh in the background. Beautiful circular spots of light softly illuminate the flower.

There wasn’t much editing that went into the photograph of the tulip above. A touch of vibrancy was added to heighten the colors and the exposure was adjusted slightly. The focus is also a little soft which helps lend itself to the soft bright feel of this image.

You might be able to classify this image as having a glowing look but the sunlight is obscured by the flowers and the majority of the image is not in sharp focus. The light and the shallow depth of field bring this flower image into the realm of luminous abstract.

Here is an example of the classic lens flare. This image, while the same subject matter as above, was processed with more blue tones and a different depth of field. The goal was to include that star-shaped flare of light.

The Look is About Creative Interpretation

Creating a look and feel for your images is an important part of the creative process. These days the majority of our efforts are focused on creating a look in post-processing. That doesn’t have to be the case, it is possible to create a look in camera as well.

The luminous look is just one of many different creative styles you can utilize in your work. Choosing a look is about deciding how you want the image to be presented to the viewer. It’s also about the message you wish to communicate. Finally, creating a look is about your artistic interpretation of a scene. Wanting to take something like a dreary rainy day and make it feel bright and airy is just as valid as capture the reality you see before you.

So it’s time to experiment with different looks. Give the luminous look a try and show off your best work in the comments below.

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How to Create Abstract Photos with Colored Paper

04 Jul

Developed in China, paper as we know it has been around for at least 2000 years. Originally made by pressing the wet fibers of plant-derived cellulose together and dried in sheets, paper’s ability to be mass produced resulted in the advancement of the written word as a means to pass information down through time. This accelerated exchange of information triggered a revolution in cultural and technological advancements that have shaped the way we live today.

Artists paint and photographers print on specialized paper. Books, magazines, and newspapers distribute information across the world. Important documents are filed away on paper, ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. Even with today’s abundance of computer screens, paper has endured as an indispensable material.

Creating abstract photos is another wonderful use of paper. With a few bulldog clips, some colored paper, and a bit of creativity, you can create beautiful abstract images to enjoy and use as desktop wallpapers or backgrounds.

Creating Abstract Photos with Colored Paper - orange and red abstract image

What you will need

Your camera
A macro lens or set of extension tubes
A selection of different colored paper (I used a packet of variously sized one-color per piece origami paper I found at a dollar shop).
Several medium or large bulldog clips.

Selecting a space

First, you’ll need to choose a space to set up in. This is important because your paper needs to be exposed to plenty of natural light. Otherwise, your shadows will be too dark, and your photographs will look flat or awkward.

Set up outside, or near a large window with a decent amount of light flooding into your space. I work on a desk outside, with plenty of room to move and shoot from different perspectives.

Creating Abstract Photos with Colored Paper - orange circle abstract

Setting up

Setting up for this project is can be a little tricky. Once you’ve settled on a space to work in, you’ll need to arrange your colored paper. First, select a piece of colored paper that will serve as the background for the image. You’ll want this background to cover the frame, so choose a size that has adequate coverage. The background color is up to you, so choose whatever catches your eye.

Next, add a second layer of paper to sit on top of the background. This will be your foreground subject. Again, the color is up to you. To make an interesting image, you need to separate the foreground layer from the background. You’ll do this by physically adjusting the orientation of the foreground paper.

Creating Abstract Photos with Colored Paper - bulldog paper clip

Generally, sheets of paper want to stay flat and straight, so shaping your foreground paper can take a little bit of coordination. An easy way to control the orientation of the paper is to add weight to its edges. Attach a bulldog clip to each side of the piece of colored paper and lay it down so that there is a gap between the foreground and background paper.

Photographing your creations

Once you’ve attached your bulldog clips and arranged your paper, it’s time to get busy photographing. There are no hard-and-fast rules here, just photograph what you think looks best.

Try sitting your foreground paper vertically or horizontally in relation to the background paper for different depth effects. You can also try focusing your lens on different areas of the paper, or for a smooth, featureless gradient, unfocus your lens altogether. Focus on a small section of your paper or zoom out to include the whole arrangement.

You can modify the shape of your foreground paper by manipulating the location of the bulldog clips on the paper. Moving them closer together creates a nice S or U bend in the middle of the paper for soft organic lines. For harder lines, move the bulldog clips further away from each other to tighten the paper.

blue and yellow abstract - Creating Abstract Photos with Colored Paper

Paper has a thousand uses, the great thing about this project is that there is no right or wrong way to do things. Just take some time to relax and experiment. If you have kids or grandchildren, get them to help you – they’ll have fun helping to arrange the paper.

Enjoy!

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How to Create an Exploding Sandwich Food Photo

29 Jun

Here is a fun tutorial to try if you enjoy food photography. Anyone can photograph a sandwich on a plate, but you can you make it explode and capture all the layers in a photo? Here’s how it’s done as shown by photographer Skyler Burt.

How to do it

If you enjoyed that and want to brush up on your food photography in general, check out these dPS articles:

Are You Making These Five Food Photography Mistakes?
Five Essentials of Doing Dark Food Photography
4 Tips for Beginners to Food Photography
Household Items to Bring to Your Next Food Photography Shoot
The Secret to Finding the Hero Angle in Food Photography

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9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

29 Jun

Sometimes it feels like getting the right composition is an endlessly moving target, with this technique and that idea and many other considerations. Balance is one of the more complicated concepts but is also a really powerful tool that is worth investing some time learning. To help you out, here are 9 ways and elements you can use to help you create balance in your images.

lighthouse - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

What is balance?

Balance is a way of composing an image so that all elements complement each other equally. Visual tension or harmony are created which results in a pleasing image.

Many different elements can be involved with incorporating balance into your image composition:

Color
Light versus shadow
Texture
Visual weight
Subject placement
Relation of elements to each other
Symmetry
Depth of field
Negative space

How do you achieve balance?

When you compose your scene you need to think about the different elements and how they interact and relate to each other. What is the story you want to tell or frame up? What is the emotion you are trying to convey?

Balance can be harmonious, where all elements are equally present and form an aesthetically pleasing whole – symmetry is a good example. A landscape scene perfectly mirrored in a still pond or lake is very harmonious.

An image can have visual tension due to unbalance. It may seem counterintuitive to say that this also creates balance but think about negative space or a small spot of bright red in an otherwise dull image.

Often several different factors come into play in considering balance, it’s not necessarily just one problem to solve for each image. Every image has color, a subject, tone, contrast and so on, which are all involved in producing your final image.

Some of these concepts have to do with the mechanics of how you take the photo (light/shadow/contrast/tone) and some are more compositional (symmetry/negative space/subject placement). So there are many different things to consider at once within each image.

Let’s look at each in more detail:

#1 – COLOR

cherries in a bowl - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Even though this is a very dark image with a lot of blacks, the rich intense color of the cherries is not lost in the background – the color, quantity and placement balance out against the black shadows

Color has a great impact on your images. When color film finally emerged it had a huge impact on photography. Being able to see bright colors instead of monochrome was very different. It lead to many different styles and techniques in photography and is still the dominant way images are processed today.

It allows you to evoke emotion, create tension, highlight a specific element, catch our attention and tell the story of the image in different ways.

garden with a red bush - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Take this garden shot with all the different foliage shades of green and yellow – yet the eye goes immediately to the small but prominent red flowers. This image has balance because the red has a lot of visual weight but physically is only a small part of the overall image.

If it was much bigger it would overwhelm, instead, it gives somewhere to start the journey looking at all the different textures and colors contained in the garden.

b/w of a bike - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Using color to evoke a mood, a feeling, or a period of time

This old bicycle turned into a Welcome sign at a historic homestead. By opting for a slightly sepia tone it picks up all the textures in the shot and evens out all the different competing colors. The focus becomes the bicycle and not the bright green of the grass or the red of the chicken in the background. Changing the colors balances out all the other elements and allows the subject you want to be the focus.

#2 – LIGHT VERSUS SHADOW

Light and shadow are the opposite elements necessary for photography. If you have light, in general, you will have shadows. When you have both present it gives your subjects added dimension, they become physical rounded elements, not flat even though they are being viewed in a flat 2D medium (either printed or on a screen).

Contrast and tonal difference make an image more dynamic and interesting. Contrast comes from the difference between the amount of light and shadow in an image. More contrast also widens out the tonal range of the image, when it is too similar it will look very flat (like the seaside landscape below).

overcast seascape image - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

This image taken on a heavily overcast day has very little contrast, it’s quite flat and tonally similar and as a result, lacks punch and impact. It is not balanced in the light/shadow equation and it shows up visually as a result.

So learning to use both light and shadow together can create balance in your images. The horseshoe image below was specifically shot to use the harsh midday sun to generate the shadows and capture the patterns and how they hang on the nails. It would be a much less interesting image without the shadows.

horse shoes in b/w - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#3 – TEXTURE

Texture can be present in different ways – in the image of the spoons with spices (below) there are three layers of texture – the background surface, the spices in the spoons, and some scattered spices. While there is a lot of texture in the image, it balances due to the scale and the blending layer in between which softens the difference between the spices and the industrial background.

If the extra scattered spices were not there it would not work as well as they help transition the eye around the image.

spices in 3 spoons - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

This blueberry shot uses texture in a different way, where the subjects themselves become the textural element, with some added interest in the form of water droplets. Without the droplets, it was a much less interesting image, and the fine detail of the droplets help balance out the size of the berries, giving the eye more elements to engage with.

blueberries - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Think tree bark, patterns on the water, brick walls, cracks in the pavement, clouds in the sky, foliage in a garden, shiny reflective metal, stones in a pond, sand at the beach. Think long exposure to produce soft foamy waterfalls or interesting cloud patterns. Consider ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) for soft blurred effect or pretty light trails.

Texture is all around you and in everything you see, but it is often taken for granted. Texture can be highlighted and become a key element in your image if you take the time to see it and take advantage of it.

#4 – VISUAL WEIGHT

This is a tricky concept to come to grips with as it sometimes seems a bit contradictory. How can a small element overwhelm a bigger image? How can one color dominate another one?

In the butterfly image below, the tones are all very similar, even the colors are shades of yellow and brown. Yet the visual weight is actually held by the fuzzy green leaf in the bottom corner. If you crop the bottom section off it completely changes the feel of the image, and the butterfly becomes more prominent.

monarch butterfly - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

One of my personal favourite images is of a fresh new bright limestone headstone in a cemetary of very old and weathered stones (below). The light was at the perfect angle to highlight the one stone which carries the visual weight yet is only a very small element physically within the image.

The central placement works well in balancing the other elements around it and allows more of the story to be told – if the focus was tight on the headstone it would have had a very different feel to the image.

cemetery - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

5. SUBJECT PLACEMENT

Where you place the subject in the frame is important in many ways. It can be used to show scale, the relationship between elements, to highlight tension, or to create a specific feel or stylistic tone to an image.

A classic example is the Rule of Thirds – where it is taught that a center placed subject lacks drama and impact – place the subject on the third lines to make it more dynamic within the frame. When the subject is looking in a particular direction, where you place them affects the feeling of the image. If they are looking out of the frame, placing them close to the edge is quite a different image than if you compose the image so that they are looking more into/across the frame.

In the cave image below the people add balance by providing scale. Without them there we would be unable to appreciate the true size of the cave as we have no context to apply. The bright colors of their clothes also offer some visual weight in contrast to the textured details of the rock walls. The positioning at the bottom of the frame grounds the image and helps tell the story.

large cave opening - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

The placement of this bellbird on the branch is an appealing balance of angles and lines. The line of the main branch is echoed by the blurred ones in the background – this gives some depth and scale to the image.

The bird is a nice size within the image, large enough to see the details, but not cramped within the frame and his crimson eye holds a lot of visual weight as well. If the bird was angled the other way it would be less pleasing as it would not be balanced the same way, as the X is symmetrical.

#6 – RELATIONSHIP OF ELEMENTS

Similar to #5 above, this takes the placement concept a step further. You need to consider the specific relationship between elements and how can you use that in composing your image.

In this landscape shot below, it’s a pretty simple land/sea/sky shot – not really very interesting at all. But the inclusion of the sign right next to the edge of the cliff changes everything. The bright red of the letters catches our attention (as it should) and even though the sign is small it has large impact.

Had the sign not been so close to the edge, it may have been a less compelling image. In composing this, the Rule of Thirds was also used to provide scale and context with the cliff edge off to the right, showing that the cliff continued (it was actually a whole headland of several hundred meters with just this one sign).

danger sign cliff warning - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

Below is a wide-angle landscape shot of some fossilized totara tree trunks at Curio Bay, The Catlins, NZ. Landscapes when taken with a wide angle often lose context if they don’t have a foreground element to anchor them.

The person also helps tell more of the story, while providing a color pop of bright blue visual interest and weight against the sand and rock. His presence in the front of the frame balances out the large wider angle landscape behind him and gives scale to appreciate how big it is.

man in a landscape image - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#7 – SYMMETRY

When done well and with thought, symmetry can be a useful tool. Putting your subject dead center in the frame can be a risk too. While a mirror image in a lake or puddle can be pretty, it can also be quite static and uninteresting. An odd situation where the image is perfectly balanced and yet it doesn’t actually work compositionally!

Below, the autumn tree reflection is a mirror image but the angle at which it has been shot puts the focus on the landscape. So the reflection is not necessarily the point of the image. Instead, it is more of an added bonus. Also, the way the trees are arranged creates balance across the image, the two golden willows are rounded and slightly shadowed.

They are counterbalanced by the taller golden poplar, with similarly toned grass behind, and the green of the reeds in the water. There is enough contrast in the image with the light and shadow elements to add depth and interest while the gold/blue color combination is an aesthetically pleasing one. The reflection softens the colors and tones enough that they allow the actual landscape to take prominence.

This image was specifically composed with all those things in mind.

fall scene and reflection - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#8 – DEPTH OF FIELD

Does everything in your image have to be 100% sharp? My answer to that is no. You can use Depth of Field creatively, balancing the subject against the softer background, allowing the subject to be prominent and the strong focal element.

Imagine the shot of the larch cones below if the aperture was more like f/11. If all the foliage and trees in the background were in focus then the cones would be lost against it. Portrait photographers use this concept to their advantage, shooting their subject in a similar way to get them to stand out from a sometimes messy or distracting background.

pine cones on a tree - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

#9 – NEGATIVE SPACE

Negative space is an interesting composition element that works for some shots. Remembering to keep it in the back of your mind for the rare occasion it might suit can be difficult. Also being brave enough to try a different approach than you normally use is challenging.

When used carefully, negative space adds value to an image by providing a lot of empty space to create balance for a particular subject. It is often used successfully in travel photos, where brightly coloured walls or buildings offer a great canvas for a person to be posed against, often as they walk past.

This gerbera shot has a lot of negative space on the left and underneath the flower. Because of the curving stem and the dynamic angle of the flower, this image has a lot of movement for the eye. The negative space offers a calming balance to that energy.

pink gerbera - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

The smooth soft water of this long exposure offers some negative space to balance out the visual weight of the rocks and the busy sky. The light tones of the water also create balance with the darker tones of the sand.

b/w beach scene - 9 Ways to Create Balance in Your Photography

CONCLUSION

Sometimes an image can feel just subtly off even though the subject might be good, the light is good and the composition seems to be alright. It is worth taking a look at those images with fresh eyes and considering the balance of the different elements discussed here. Perhaps you will begin to see some opportunities to compose your images in a different way?

Composition often seems to be a never-ending quest to find the holy grail of elements. Do you have perfect lighting? Is your subject awesome? Are they doing something cool or interesting? Are the colors fresh and vibrant? Is it exotic? Does it have a wow factor?

Yet your image might have all of those things and still not seem quite right. So take a look at how the different elements relate to each other from a balance point of view.

Maybe instead of trying to remember all the complicated rules of composition – let’s keep it much simpler and start with balance. Or maybe you want your work to be really edgy and challenging and you aim for the tension in a deliberately unbalanced work – that is also a viable creative choice too.

But if you feel that your images lack a certain something, try looking at them from a balance point of view and see what you get. Like everything in photography, there is no one single right way to do it. Instead, there are many different ways, and hopefully one will resonate with you to help you learn something new.

If you are someone who considers balance when composing your images, what other ways do you think about? This is merely a summary of the many possible options that I keep in mind when shooting. Please share any others I haven’t mentioned in the comment area below.

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How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects

19 Jun

You might have seen photos in nature magazines or websites with silky-smooth water effects cascading over rocks, branches, and trees. Have you also wondered how in the world the photographer was able to capture such beautiful images?

For years I thought these types of images were the purview of professional photographers armed with an arsenal of digital tricks and camera tweaks that I would never be able to learn. But in reality, it’s quite simple to make images like these.

You don’t need any computational wizardry or mystical skills, and once you pick up a few basics you can start creating beautiful smooth-water photographs in no time at all.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - waterfall over a brook

Limiting the Light

To start with, the goal here is somewhat counterintuitive compared to a lot of other types of photography. Instead of letting in as much light as possible, the goal with smooth-water pictures is to let in the smallest amount of light in order to allow your shutter to remain open as long as it can. This requires a couple of settings on your camera as well as, in most cases, a very inexpensive piece of gear.

When you take a picture at a high shutter speed of 1/125th or 1/500th of a second it’s fast enough to freeze motion and allow you to get a blur-free picture of your subject. This is usually a good thing except when cascading water is involved, as freezing the motion is the opposite of what you are trying to do. Limiting the light allows the water to create motion trails and also adds an entirely different tone to the image, often one of peace and tranquility.

The following two images illustrate what I mean. This first one was taken at 1/60th of a second.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - moving water, partially frozen

1/60th of a second. Some motion trails are present but the image doesn’t feel calm, and also lacks a focal point.

The next one was taken with a much slower shutter speed and feels like an entirely different picture.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - slower shutter speed and blurred water

What you need to do

In order to cut down on the incoming light and also make sure you are getting the best images you will need to do the following:

Shoot in Manual Mode so you can force your camera to do what you want, not what it thinks you want. Using Auto or semi-auto modes (P, Av, Tv, A, or S) will usually not work for these types of shots.
Shoot in RAW so you can tweak your image afterward. It’s difficult to get smooth-water photos just right straight out of the camera and it’s nice to be able to tweak things to your liking.
Use a small aperture. Not necessarily the smallest aperture your lens allows, because this can sometimes cause image quality to deteriorate due to light diffraction, but a value of around f/11 or f/16 should be fine.
Use the lowest native ISO value for your camera. This will let you use slower shutter speeds while also giving you the cleanest, sharpest image possible.
Use the slowest shutter speed possible without overexposing the image too much. If you’re using RAW you can probably overexpose by one stop and recover things in post-production. But much more than that and you’re going to blow out all your highlights.
Put your camera on a tripod to minimize any shake or wobble from your hands. My favorite is the Joby Gorillapod since it lets me position my camera using just about any available surface, and allows me to get nice and close to the water as well.

Neutral Density Filters

Even with all this, it’s difficult to get a slow enough shutter speed to really create some good smoothing effects, and the solution is to use a Neutral Density filter. This is an inexpensive attachment that screws on to the front of your lens and cuts down the incoming light.

I like to think of it as putting sunglasses on your camera. This is the secret to getting the type of silky smooth water effects you have always admired but never knew how to create on your own.

shot of a fountain - How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects

Here, a long exposure of 1-second not only smoothed the water in the fountain but evened out the surface of the pond as well.

There are many different kinds of ND filters that block varying levels of light, but my recommendation for smooth-water images is one that blocks 3 or 6 stops of light. Others are available but they block so much light that it’s difficult to get your exposure settings right.

You can find ND filters at any camera retailer but the key is to get one that fits your lens. Look on your lens cap to find the thread size. It will usually be the Greek letter phi followed by a number, such as 53mm or 58mm.

ND filters often come in packs of two or three. While these cheaper ones aren’t going to produce the absolutely highest-quality results they are a fantastic and inexpensive way to get started.

Getting the Shot

I enjoy creating silky smooth water images on cloudy days since it means even more light is blocked – almost like nature’s own ND filter. Morning and evening are good times to shoot as well. But any time of day will work as long as you can get slow shutter speeds using a small aperture, low ISO, and an ND filter.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - yellow leaf in flowing water

2 seconds. The long exposure time really helped create a sense of motion in the background while the leaf in the foreground serves as a focal point for the viewer.

Use Live View

I like to use Live View when preparing my shot since I can adjust the exposure parameters and see the image lighten or darken in real-time. But if you are using an optical viewfinder just pay attention to your light meter and you should be fine.

When your camera is ready and you have your shot composed, use your camera’s self-timer so you don’t add any shakiness to the image with your fingers when you press the shutter.

This method can also be used for adding a layer of gloss to moving waters, which is a fun way to add a bit of a creative element to pictures taken at the beach. The difference is that instead of trying to get pictures that show the motion of water, you are trying to make the water as smooth as possible.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - lake shot

At 1/90th of a second, the water is full of ripples and small waves.

Limiting the amount of incoming light by using the techniques above (small aperture, low ISO, and ND filters) I was able to virtually eliminate the appearance of imperfections on the surface of the water.

How to Create Silky Smooth Water Effects - long exposure on a lake

6 seconds. In addition to the surface being smooth, a host of large and small rocks are now visible which creates an additional almost otherworldly feeling.

Conclusion

Creating these types of images can be addicting! Once you get the hang of it, you may want to spend all day seeing what you can create with your camera. It doesn’t take much, but it opens up a whole new photography frontier that can be extraordinarily enjoyable and highly rewarding.

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21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas

18 Jun

Panoramas are a great way to approach photographing landscapes. By allowing you to capture a larger amount of the scene in front of you, it is easier to portray what you actually saw with your eyes in your photographs. Software has made it stupidly easy to stitch your photos into panoramas; however, there are still some considerations you can take to get the most out of your landscapes and make better panoramas.

panorama of mountains and a lake - 21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas

This article presumes you already know how the basics of capturing a sequence of images and to how to stitch them together as panoramas in Lightroom or another dedicated software package.

Part 1 – Gear

Such a specialized technique may seem like it requires a lot of specialist gear to get right, but that’s not the case. Of the three items listed below, only two are absolutely necessary and as someone interested in landscapes, you probably already have the most important one.

1) Tripod

21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas - camera on a tripod

A tripod is an absolute necessity if you want to create better panoramas.

This first one is probably obvious, but it’s the most important when it comes to creating better panoramas. All of the images in your sequence need to line up perfectly and the only way to ensure that is with a good, sturdy tripod. The tiniest of movements between your photographs can cause Lightroom to fail when stitching your photos together.

failed panorama - 21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas

You never know when an image might not get through the stitching software. Do your best to get it absolutely right in camera to avoid situations like this one (notice the disconnected railing).

Disheartened may be the feeling you get when you see the words “Unable to merge the photos. Please cancel and review the selection.” So, please, for your own sanity, use a tripod when shooting panoramas.

2) Panoramic tripod head

21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas - tripod head detail

If you have a tripod head that can turn in measured increments like this one, attach your lens to the tripod if you can (using a tripod collar), rather than your camera body.

This is an optional piece of kit, but I promise you, if you plan on doing panoramas often, make sure you have a panoramic head on your tripod. These heads rotate on the center axis of your camera and help minimize distortion in your final image.

Panoramic heads are also marked with numbers from 0 to 360 degrees so you can make your camera movements with absolute accuracy. There are a lot of good panoramic tripod heads available and you will be able to find one in the same price range as other styles of heads.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I’m talking about the cheap kind that you can find in a normal price range. There are panoramic heads with motorized components made for the explicit purpose of stitching together photos. I’m not talking about those. If you can afford one, by all means, go for it, but unless you specialize in panoramas, it’s unlikely that you would ever need to even consider one.

3) Spirit level

spirit level - 21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas

Spirit levels will help you guarantee that all of your shots line up in the stitching software.

While you can still achieve good results without one, using a spirit level will help you make sure that your panoramic sequence stitches together with a minimal amount of distortion. This is important when you have compositional elements at the edges of your frame. If those elements get distorted too much, they will wind up (either partially or fully) outside of your crop.

You may already have one or more built into your tripod, but if not, you can buy one that fits your cameras hotshoe for a reasonable price.

Part 2 – Capture

Camera craft is easily the most important aspect of capturing better panoramic images. From getting a correctly aligned sequence of images, to focus and exposure, there are a lot of elements that you need to get right in camera to ensure that your images come out well.

4) Practice your movements

To be fast, you should be able to operate your camera and your tripod without thinking about them. In fact, these movements should be ingrained as muscle memory. How do you do this? Practice, lots of practice.

21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas - panorama of a scene outside

Practice your camera and tripod movements when it doesn’t count. For example, I had an hour of down time in a hotel, so I took a few sequences through the window.

One of the best ways to go about getting that practice is to make some time to set up in a low-value environment. So when your practice images are (inevitably) bad, you won’t have missed any images that were worth taking. It can be as simple as going into your backyard and setting up there for an hour.

Once you’re set up, go through the motions of taking a panorama in slow, deliberate steps. Make sure that every action from focussing through to the actual camera movements is perfectly executed. Go through the motions a few times and when you are sure that you have it down, speed up a little. Again, repeat this until you’re satisfied that you have it down. Then speed up again.

Keep practicing like this until you’re performing all the actions without even thinking about them. Doing this for just an hour will reduce your chances of a mistake when you are standing at the edge of a lake in that once in a lifetime perfect light.

If you really want to hammer it down, don’t just practice like this once. If you have some downtime, try using that time to reinforce these skills instead of, say, scrolling through your phone.

5) Take notes

21 Tips to Help You Create Better Panoramas - notes on paper

Notes don’t have to be complicated, they just need to be clear enough that you understand them without much effort.

Taking notes will ensure that you are an organizational genius. It doesn’t matter how you take your notes, whether it be on a notepad, your phone, or in voice recording app such as Evernote. As long as you can annotate the file numbers where each of your panoramas starts and stops, you’re on to a winner.

Editor’s tip: You can also take a shot of your hand in front of the lens before and after your pano shots so you can mark the beginning and end of the series that way as well.

6) Longer lenses

Instead of using your wide-angle lenses, use longer focal lengths when making panoramas. 35mm, 50mm and 85mm are all good choices depending on the scene in front of you. The longer focal lengths allow a different perspective by bringing everything forward in the frame, unlike wide-angle lenses that push everything back.

Because you are both shooting in portrait orientation and stitching together multiple images, you will still get a wide view of your scene with the sky and foreground intact.

Create Better Panoramas - using a longer focal length

Long lenses are great for panormas. The images for this panorama were shot at 200mm. However, 50mm, 85mm and any focal length above that, will help to bring your subject forward in the frame.

7) Manual exposure

For the best results, set your camera to Manual mode for the duration of your sequence. If your exposures don’t match from frame to frame, then the software may not be able to merge your panorama.

If your scene is simple and has relatively few elements in it, you may get away with Aperture Priority mode. However, if one half of your image has a mountain or a building and the other half a clear sky, the difference in exposures will result in unusable images for the panorama merge.

8) Small aperture to help with stitching

Another way to make sure the stitching software performs well is to use a small aperture to keep everything in the frame as sharp as possible. Using apertures like f/11 and f/16 will go a long way in helping you to get sharp panoramas.

You can use larger apertures if you’d prefer, but just be aware that it might result in the software being unable to merge your panorama.

9) Focus somewhere inside your frame

Create Better Panoramas - wide shot of a path in the forest

In this image, I focused two-thirds of the way down the path, set the lens to manual focus, and then reframed the camera to start at the left.

When focusing, it seems easy enough to set your focus somewhere in the first frame of your sequence. If you’re focusing to infinity, that’s fine, but if you’re focusing on a point closer to you, your focal point may not wind up in your final crop.

It takes longer and requires you to be careful not to jar the camera, but consider setting the focus on your main focal point of the image. Then switch to manual focus and recompose the camera to your starting position.

This does create an extra chance for things to go wrong. However, you have to ask yourself whether it’s better to have an out of focus image because of a mistake or an out of focus image because you didn’t bother to take the necessary steps in the first place?

10) Portrait orientation

camera on a tripod shooting vertically - Create Better Panoramas

When shooting panoramas, you have access to all the information in the horizontal aspects of a scene. Maximize your information in the verticals by shooting in portrait orientation.

Because you will be creating one big image out of many smaller images, it’s a good idea to maximize the amount of real estate you have to create the final photo. Instead of keeping your camera in landscape (horizontal) orientation, put it into portrait (vertical) orientation so that you get as much information as possible on the vertical axis of your scene.

As far as the horizontal, you can always take more photos at either end of the sequence to make sure you get the most information, but this isn’t the case with the vertical.

11) Excessive overlap

example of image overlap - Create Better Panoramas

In this sequence of three images, you can see just how much overlap there is. With the left and right images lined up, the middle image is barely visible. Overkill? Maybe, but it’s worth it for peace of mind.

When you are taking the images that you will stitch together, be overly generous with the amount you leave as overlap from one image to the next. Yes, this will result in you needing more frames for a complete sequence and it will require more processing power as well. But it also gives you more leeway in the stitching process and it will result in better final images.

12) Overshoot

Create Better Panoramas - panoramic scene

Taking more images than you need for your final panoramas will provide you with a wealth of options for composition once you’re back at the computer.

When creating panoramas, there’s only one hard and fast rule (apart from the tripod) that I adhere to. That is to take more images in a sequence than I think I need. For example, if you’re trying to create an image of a church and you get all the images you think you need in five frames, shoot five more.

If you allow yourself excess on either edge frame, you will have far more compositional choices later. On top of that, you will also negate any potential distortion that may cause your focal point to be cropped during merging. Trust me, the wiggle room this provides is well worth the tiny bit of extra time and space on your memory card.

13) Be fast

Because you are taking multiple images for each panorama, there is a chance that elements in your scene may be moving. Water and clouds can prove to be a huge headache in the stitching process. You can alleviate this to a degree by being fast. Once your first shot is created, your hands should be already moving to change the camera to its next position.

14) Bracket for HDR

Merging to HDR and stitching panoramas in Lightroom works really well. Merge each individual frame to HDR first, then stitch them together as a panorama.

Should you find yourself in a high contrast scenario, feel free to bracket your exposures for HDR blending. I have had good results in Lightroom with blending each frame (from a bracketed set of exposures) into HDR individually and then merging them all together as a panorama.

If you try this, make sure you don’t use the Auto Tone function in Lightroom’s Merge to HDR dialogue box. It will treat each image as an individual and will make it next to impossible to stitch your images together as a panorama. Instead, wait until your panorama is merged and then make your adjustments manually.

15) Use your GND filters

Create Better Panoramas - pano of a mountain scene

When creating panoramas, use your GND filters to your heart’s content.

Likewise, you can use graduated neutral density filters to your heart’s content. If you have a tricky horizon line, such as a mountain range, just move your filter into the appropriate place between taking the images. As long as you are careful to not move your camera, this will work just fine.

Part three – Post processing

Because you are stitching together your images in software, the post-production stage of creating panoramas cannot be ignored.

16) Create a system to differentiate sequences in Lightroom

After a heavy session of shooting images for panoramas, you may find yourself inside Lightroom utterly confused. Triple that confusion if you were shooting HDRs and panoramas together. With so many similar images, it can difficult to figure out what starts and stops where.

An easy way to deal with this at the time of shooting is to devise a way for you to know when a sequence starts and when it ends.

All I do is wave my hand in front of the lens for the first image, then I take the first frame again having removed my hand. At the end, if I’m starting another panoramic sequence, I do it again. Inside Lightroom, all you have to do is look for the images that fall between the shots of your hands.

thumbnails of pano shots in Lightroom - Create Better Panoramas

It doesn’t matter how you differentiate your sequences, but you definitely need to do something. It will save you hours of frustration and confusion.

I also use the color label system in Lightroom. After identifying a panoramic sequence, I select them all and right click and select “Set Color Label > Blue” from the menu.

Other options include taking a photo with the lens cap on or holding a piece of paper in front of the lens. You could do anything for this as long as it helps you figure out where things begin and end.

If you combine this with taking notes, then you should never find yourself in a state of confusion.

17) Do Lens Corrections and Chromatic Aberration removal first

Create Better Panoramas - lens correction panel in LR

An important step to take before you start the stitching process is to apply any Lens Corrections and removal of Chromatic Aberrations before you stitch the images together. Any vignetting or distortion caused by your lens can have drastic effects on your panoramas and it’s best to deal with them before they have a chance to become a problem.

18) Use boundary warp

merge to panorama in LR - Create Better Panoramas

Using boundary warp in LR Merge to Panorama can help ensure that you get everything you intended in your frame.

The Auto Crop function often works well to get rid of the white space around a stitched panorama, but sometimes elements in your scene (foreground elements most of the time) can wind up cropped out of the composition. You can use the boundary warp slider in the Merge to Panorama dialogue box to adjust how your image is cropped.

It doesn’t always work, but if you are unhappy with how things appear, remember to try the boundary slider as it may fix your problem.

19) Crop

If you’re at all like me, then cropping is a bit of a dirty word. You know, get it right in camera and don’t sacrifice the resolution and all that jazz. In terms of panoramas, throw that out of the window. Not only should you crop to your heart’s content, but you should revel in it.

If you have overshot a scene, you probably have a really wide image. The thing is, those really wide panoramas often aren’t very pleasing. Go in with the crop tool, and find a strong composition inside of your stitched frame.

Try to think about it like this – your image, straight out of the stitching software is what you saw at the scene. Instead of composing your image while behind your camera, you’re now composing it with the crop tool. Because you (hopefully) took more images than you needed and you have far too much information to best present your subject. Just get rid of the excess and leave only what needs to be there.

20) Consider standard crop ratios

Create Better Panoramas - ultra wide panorama shot

Here is the original panorama straight out of the stitching software. While cool, the format is a bit wide for most uses.

As mentioned, ultra-wide panoramas are a hard sell. They are cool from a technical standpoint, but in terms of composition, they tend to fall short. Instead, consider using crop ratios already associated with panoramic images. These include 16:9, 16:10, 1:3, 6:17, 1:2.

The first two of these are already crop presets in Lightroom. The last three are all aspect ratios native to dedicated panoramic cameras. In order, they are the Hasselblad Xpan, the Fuji GX617, and the Lomography BelAir.

16:9 Ratio

16:10 Ratio

1:3 Ratio

6:17 Ratio

1:2 Ratio

As you can see, there are plenty of options for established crop ratios.

Bonus round

21) Shoot panoramas of normal scenes for bigger files

Not every scene needs to be shot as a panorama. In fact, there is more than enough for you to accomplish as a photographer if you never so much as touch the technique.

However, panoramic stitching offers you another tool that may not be as obvious.

Shot normally, the resulting PSD file is about 35mb.

If you approach a normal scene (let’s say in a 2:3 ratio) and shoot it in a panoramic sequence, the extra information you capture in the vertical means that your final image size will be quite a bit larger than just a straight shot from your camera.

If, for example, you suspect that you will want to make a huge print of a particular image, this technique will give you some extra resolution to work with.

Cropping in from the panoramic sequence gave me a PSD file of 55mb, nearly twice the size of the original.

Conclusion

That’s a long list, but it’s not exhaustive. If you’ve stuck with me this long, you’re probably pretty serious about getting the most out of your panoramas.

If you’re just starting out with this technique, remember not to be too hard on yourself if you forget to use every one of these tips. Take it slow and before you know it, you’ll find that all of this becomes second nature with only a little bit of effort and practice.

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