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How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art

02 Mar

It’s fun to be creative with your photos, elevating them beyond a digital image and into painterly style art instead. Perhaps you have a great shot of your dog but the neighbor’s bright red car is distracting in the background. Maybe your kid was cute at the park but the swings are poking into one side of the shot. It might be nice to make a festive or birthday card for a relative with the personal touch.

Or maybe you have seen other people doing cool creative stuff on Instagram and you would like to have a go too?

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art

Image of my cat Cognac created in Waterlili.

There are many ways to edit your images with a painterly style, for this article we are going to focus on the possibilities on offer to make your images look like watercolor art. Whether you use a PC, Laptop, tablet or phone, there is something available. You don’t need Photoshop nor do you always need to spend heaps of money on software either.

Note: This isn’t a How To article, this is us dipping our toe into the water to see what the options are – some are quite complicated and probably need Photoshop (or similar).

Watercolor Programs and Apps

There are many different ways to achieve a watercolor effect. Some are surprisingly easy and yet effective, and some are a lot more complicated. Let’s start with the easy options and go from there.

1. Dedicated Mobile Apps

I have an iPad for doing creative work and there are a couple of specific Watercolor Apps that I like. They have a realistic effect and enough capability to allow you to tweak them and get some variety with your final efforts.

Waterlili

Waterlili turns your image into a watercolor and allows you to tweak color, contrast and saturation. It also has an built-in mask effect for adding some uniqueness to your image.

Waterlili is available for IOS.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - lilacs

Original photo before editing.

Lilac flowers done in Waterlili.

Same image as above, but have applied a watercolor mask effect in Waterlili for a different outcome.

Waterlogue

Waterlogue has several preset options to choose from, and some contrast options to apply. You can save your image in a variety of image file sizes (small files can be used in social media, large files could be printed).

Available for IOS, Android and Win10.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - cat photo

Original image before editing in Waterlogue.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - cat image painterly style

2. Creative Mobile Apps

A creative app is one that allows you more scope with your editing, and offers a variety of different creative and editing options. It isn’t a “one hit wonder” like the first options above. My weapon of choice here is called iColorama.

iColorama has several different ways of adding a painterly effect using its settings. But its real strength is the capability to layer and mask images (like in Photoshop) so you can blend elements of images together for a very creative and completely unique piece of art. It is a program with an impressive depth of capabilities.

It’s IOS only, but Android users could consider Snapseed.

Original image before creative editing.

After painterly effects applied in iColorama.

In this third image, I took the second image with painterly effect into Waterlili, and then blended the two in iColorama for this final image.

3. Options using Photoshop

Actually most photo editing programs that support layers and masks will work here (Elements, Paint Shop Pro etc.). But you need to have Photoshop or similar installed to use these options.

Watercolor Brush and Mask

This is a fairly simple option, but you do need to know how to use layers and how to apply a mask. Also required are some watercolor brushes (these can be found free online or good quality ones can be purchased).

Load up your image, add a new white layer on top of the image. Working on the white layer, tap with your water color brush to reveal the image below. It can take a few goes to get it looking really watercolor, and tweaking the brush opacity up and down helps.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - birds

Photoshop Actions

Actions are where someone has recorded all the steps necessary to make the desired outcome in Photoshop for you. A bit of manual intervention at the beginning sets it up, click Play on the Action and it runs and does its thing.

The best Photoshop Action artist I know is sevenstyles, and he has an amazing library of effects available, including a Watercolor option. Once created you can tweak and edit many components to add your personal flourish if you want. An action can be used over and over again and does provide some variety in the results.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - cherries

Plugin Software

Plugins are separate programs that work within Photoshop to fulfill an additional requirement. Some will work as standalone programs, but many are only accessible from within Photoshop. My favorite painting plugin is Impression by Topaz Studio.

It has a huge range of different painting presets already loaded and you can tweak EVERYTHING – brush size and shape, direction, color, light contrast, add a vignette, and so on. It’s a very powerful tool and capable of beautiful painted effects. It does need a fairly powerful computer with a decent graphics card to run it, so check that your hardware will support it first.

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - train

This image had the background replaced with a painted image and then it was run through Topaz Impression.

4. Dedicated Painting Software

For PC/Mac there are some options for software that is specifically designed to mimic painting effects. The most commonly known one is called Corel Painter. It’s expensive, complicated, and difficult to learn which is fine if you are an artist and that’s your thing. If you are someone who wants to dabble a bit for a really genuine watercolor effect then there is another option available called Rebelle.

Rebelle is a fraction of the price of Painter, much easier to use, and it has the most incredible realistic watercolor effect as well as other painting and drawing options. It’s also available for a free trial. I have no artistic background, so the realism of Rebelle was initially a bit of a hurdle for me, so I signed up to do an online watercolor course and work with real paints, which really helped.

You don’t need to do that, but I can tell you quite genuinely, there is little difference between dipping your brush into some real paint and doing it with Rebelle (except the digital version makes no mess!)

How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art - lighthouse

Original photo.

Painted image – the lighthouse, rocks, and sea painted in Rebelle, the sky done in Photoshop with watercolor brushes and the sketch effect done with Akvis Sketch.

Summary

This article barely dips its toe into the range of options available for doing painterly watercolor conversions of your images. Hopefully, these examples show you that there are many choices to suit all skill levels and budgets.

It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. I am constantly surprised at how much mobile apps are capable of these days, seems like you don’t need Photoshop at all!

If you have other apps you use and would recommend for creating painterly style images, please put them in the comments below. Otherwise, go forth and be artistic!

The post How to Turn Your Photos into Painterly Style Watercolor Art by Stacey Hill appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

27 Feb

It’s hard to beat the power and drama of good black and white photography. There’s a reason that monochrome has survived and prospered as an artistic medium despite the arrival of color photos. But how do you harness the power of black and white for yourself? The key is in your composition.

The problem with composition is that it’s such a vast topic it’s easy to lose track of the various principles and the ways you can put them into the practice. So let’s keep it simple – I’m going to give you three things you can concentrate on. Put these into practice and you’ll see a dramatic improvement in the composition of your black and white photos!

#1 – Simplicity

Simplified composition helps give your black and white photos more power by focusing attention on the main subject.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

The above landscape photo is a great example. The composition is about as simple as you can get. It works because I used a neutral density filter and a long shutter speed of 90 seconds to blur the water and clouds. The result is a black and white landscape photo with a minimalist style composition.

This principle also applies to portraiture. Keep the composition simple to focus attention on your model. An easy way to do this is to use a short telephoto lens with an aperture of around f/2.8. Get in close and make sure there are no distractions in the background to pull attention away from the person you’re photographing.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

#2 – Texture

One of the interesting things about black and white is that it brings out the interesting textures in your subject. You can use this characteristic to make your black and white photos more interesting.

This photo of some old wooden boxes is a good example.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

There are two interesting things about the composition of this image. First is the pattern created by the repeating shapes of the boxes. Second is the texture of the wood.

The absence of color in black and white helps emphasize texture. You can take it further in post-processing by applying Clarity or other tools designed to bring out texture (such as the Structure sliders in Silver Efex Pro 2).

Texture and contrast

You can take this idea further by using the contrast between smooth and rough surfaces. Some objects are more tactile than others and have lots of texture. Others have very little.

You’ll see this technique used a lot in long exposure photography, where you can take advantage of the juxtaposition between a subject with lots of texture, such as a concrete jetty, and one that has very little, like water blurred by using a neutral density filter and a long exposure. The earlier photo of two rocks is a good example.

Here’s another. I used a shutter speed of 3-minutes to blur the clouds and the water. As a result, there’s a strong contrast between the concrete in the foreground, the jetty in the distance, and the surrounding water and clouds.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

#3 – Tonal Contrast

Tonal contrast is where you have light tones and dark tones next to each other. Now we’re getting to the heart of black and white photography! This technique is not nearly as effective in color because of the way that colors that are similar in tone, such as red and green, still create a powerful contrast. Tonal contrast is the main factor that separates black and white photography from color.

The easiest way to explain how tonal contrast works is with some examples.

In the first (below) there’s a strong tonal contrast between the white and black stones. Your eyes go to the white stones because they are in the center of the frame and because they provide a strong contrast against the black stones underneath them.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

Another subject where tonal contrast is used to good effect is portraiture. In the portrait below the model’s light-toned skin contrasts with the dark background. The key to making this technique work is to make sure the background is in shade and that it contains no distracting highlights.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

So far both examples have shown a light toned subject against a dark background. But you can turn it around by placing a dark subject against a white background.

That’s the technique I used in the following portrait. I photographed the man during carnival in Spain. He was dressed for the occasion and had even painted his face. I placed him against a bright, sunlit building to take advantage of the tonal contrast between his dark skin and the white wall.

How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition

Conclusion

There are many factors that make up a good black and white photo, but the composition is one of the most important. If you want to make a strong black and white photo, then focusing on these three key factors – simplicity, texture, and tonal contrast – is a great place to start.

Mastering Composition Book Two

Want to learn more about composition? Then check out my wildly popular ebook Mastering Composition Book Two. It contains 20 lessons that will help you get better at composition, no matter what your skill level!

The post How to Make Brilliant Black and White Photos with Dramatic Composition by Andrew S. Gibson appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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How To Take Good Photos If You Wear Glasses

22 Feb

Taking beautiful photos should not be a problem for those who wear eyeglasses. When you take pictures, it’s obvious that the photographer gets as close as possible to the viewfinder to get the best view as possible. However, people with eyeglasses have a problem in doing so. If you are using eyeglasses, this problem can be solved if you follow Continue Reading

The post How To Take Good Photos If You Wear Glasses appeared first on Photodoto.

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Associated Press photographer’s video shows ‘travel photographers’ staging photos

22 Feb

Last month, Associated Press photographer A. M. Ahad shared a video on Facebook that shows something disappointing… if not terribly surprising. His video, captured at a train station in Bangladesh, shows photographers shooting staged images of a boy who is posing out a train window as if in prayer.

Ahad criticized the photographers’ actions, saying such staging is used in an effort to capture award-winning images at the expense of professional etiquette.

Speaking with PetaPixel, Ahad explained that a large number of camera-wielding tourists show up for Eid al-Adha and Bishwa Ijtema to snap images that are often posed: “They are all around making images and ruining things for professional photographers.”

“Bangladesh is not for people like this who came to ruin professional photographers etiquette for the sake of winning medal,” Ahad said in the Facebook post that accompanies the video, expressing frustration that photographers who are staging scenes are getting in the way of actual professionals. “Stop telling us that you are foreign media covering the congregation when you have no proof to show us […] just stay home, for goodness sake.”

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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This strange gadget literally shocks you into taking ‘better’ photos

21 Feb

A new project called Prosthetic Photographer involves a very real gadget designed to zap humans into taking better images. The system was created by artist and designer Peter Buczkowski, and it works with both DSLR and mirrorless cameras. Using artificial intelligence, the device constantly scans for ‘ideal’ scenes and uses mild electric shocks to force/train the photographer to capture them.

“The Prosthetic Photographer enables anybody to unwillingly take beautiful pictures,” Buczkowski explains on the project’s website. The gadget is a way for an AI to train a human, though the AI itself was first trained using a dataset containing 17,000 images, and those images were captured and rated by humans.

Using what it learned about quality photos, the Prosthetic Photographer AI identifies scenes worth capturing and trains the human behind the camera to recognize them. To do this, the AI triggers a small electric shock delivered through electrodes on the handgrip, which forces the photographer’s finger to press a button and capture said ideal scene.

As demonstrated in the video at the top of this post, users can adjust the shock strength using knobs on the back of the device. “This system is part of a new aesthetic, based on computer-generated decisions that were taught by previous human skill,” Buczkowski explains on his site. “The conscious skill of photography becomes obsolete this way.”

The resulting images feature the AI’s own aesthetic tastes, which are based on the images used to train the system. Of course, some of the scenes captured by the human who is being ‘trained’ are often… less than striking.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos

20 Feb

When I was a kid a family friend used to pick me up from school and drop me off at home. The friend’s daughter and I always had a roaring time in the back seat, screaming and messing around like kids do. Then one day we were offered stickers for good behavior. And no stickers for bad behavior.

We silently collected a sticker each day and reverently stuck them on the inside of our wardrobes. We’d compare our collection when we visited each other’s houses and swap if we could agree on a fair trade. My friend moved away a long time ago, and I moved out of the family home. But my precious sticker collection remains in what is now my sister’s bedroom. And I’m not shy to admit that I do check in on them from time to time.

What is a sticker?

A sticker is a type of label made up of various materials that have a pressure sensitive adhesive on one side and an image on the other. They’re used for anything from decoration to functional purposes to bribing children. They can adhere to almost anything – walls, cars, clothing, and paper, to name a few.

While stickers are often associated with fun, they have quite a political presence, most commonly in the form of bumper stickers that demonstrate support for ideological or political causes.

How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos

A sticky bit of history

The history of stickers is more interesting than you might think. Some historians trace the origin of stickers back to ancient Egyptians where salespeople used a type of adhesive to advertise their wares. There is, however, conjecture about where the modern sticker originated. Some believe it was Sir Rowland Hill who invented the sticker in 1839 when he introduced the self-adhesive postage stamp. Others believe the stickers were created by European food merchants as an advertising technique – much like the Egyptians.

By the 1800s, lithography became the primary method for label making, though it was an expensive and complex process. But technology was moving quickly and toward the end of the century, and the labels became much more intricate and colorful. Labels around this time were affixed with a sticky gum or paste that required the user to lick or wet them before use. In the 1930s, R. Stanton Avery invented pre-cut stickers that didn’t require licking or wetting. As a result, stickers were used in mass as bumper stickers to distribute ideas to as many people as possible.

Because technology continued to streamline the making of labels, stickers exploded in popularity in the 1960s. This was especially the case for kids, who were fascinated by the colors and images. And they’ve “stuck” with us ever since.

Making your own photos into stickers

Making stickers is incredibly simple. You can send images to an online printing company and have a couple hundred stickers delivered to your door in a few days. Homemade stickers are a little different, but they’re more fun to make. They are also more personal, so they make lovely gifts too.

What you will need:

A printer
Some images on a computer
Plain sheets of label paper, not pre-cut
Scissors

How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos

Plain, un-cut label sheets are available at office supply stores.

Notice that the label paper here isn’t pre-cut into rectangles. This means you can print your images as large or as small as you like.

Method

First of all, open up your label paper. Some label packs come with sheets pre-cut into rectangles. Make sure you purchase sheets that aren’t already divided up. You will need a plain solid sheet of label paper or your images could be cut in half.

I really liked this sign I spotted on a trip overseas, I thought it would make a great sticker too.

Select a few images you are fond of. You could select images you find visually appealing, or perhaps some that hold some significance personally. Insert the label paper as you would a regular sheet of plain paper and print your images out.

Insert the label paper as you would regular paper and print your images out.

How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos

Finally, cut out your images and you are ready to go! Your own personal stickers ready to use anywhere you like! Simple, right?

The stickers you make are totally up to you. Find something sentimental or funny, or just gather a few photos you find inspiring.

Get creative

Of course, you don’t have to select your own images to print. Here I’ve sourced some designs for smaller stickers. Simply place your images into a Photoshop document as you would your selection of photographs. After printing simply cut them out and they are ready to go.

How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos

After printing this character onto label paper, I found that it made a great sticker for my boring phone case.

For this print of a cute little character named Pipo-Kun, I decided to add a layer of holographic contact paper to make the sticker a little more eye-catching. Peel and stick your original sticker to the front layer of contact paper. Then, when you want to stick your image somewhere, peel off the protective layer on the contact paper and stick it down instead.

Give it a try folks! I’d love to see the results!

The post How to Make Simple Stickers From Your Photos by Megan Kennedy appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Photos of Tamron 70-210mm F4 lens leaked, announcement February 22nd

20 Feb

Tamron Japan shared this teaser on Instagram, shortly after leaked images of the 70-210mm F4 Di VC USD appeared online.

Tamron is preparing to release a couple of new lenses, teasing one (zoom?) lens last week, and now another, on the Tamron Japan Instagram account. Fortunately, unlike the speculation around last week’s teaser, we pretty much know what Tamron is hinting at in the image above.

That’s because, shortly before this teaser went up, a slew of leaked images of the upcoming Tamron 70-210mm F4 Di VC USD lens popped up online, leaving little doubt that this is the zoom depicted in the contrasty shot above. CanonWatch and Nokishita both got their hands on several leaked shots—CW mostly lifestyle images, Nokishita product shots.

Check them all out in the gallery below:

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As the teaser confirms, this new lens—very likely the 70-210mm F4 seen in the gallery—will be officially announced in three days time, on February 22nd, 2018. We expect the other Tamron lens teased last week to be announced at the same time.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

19 Feb

Let me point out from the start, it doesn’t matter what camera you use. From a fancy DSLR to your phone you can use these lighting tools to improve your photographs.

Photography and light go hand in hand. Simply put; if there is no light, there is no photograph.

Sunrise - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

Light is so important to great photography I’m going to ask you to put your camera down for a moment and observe. Really look at the light. The color of it, the way it’s falling on people and things. What shadows are being created?

Try looking at these different times of the day:

1. Early morning before the sun rises and while it rises

The color of light - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

You’ll see the light change from a cool blue to red, orange, and yellow light in the early morning. It will shift from a soft shadowless light to one that gives shape and texture to everything it touches. If the weather is right, you’ll witness the same in reverse, going from warm to cool at the other end of the day (sunset)!

Shape texture - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

Budding photographers tend to photograph the actual sunrise or sunset. It is beautiful to be sure. Instead, try looking at what the sun is doing to the trees or the plants or a person’s face and clothing. When the sun is low in the sky it creates gorgeous shapes and textures. On a beach, look at the texture of the sand or the shape of rocks and shells scattered here and there.

2. High noon

Raccoon eyes - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

High noon is a time better left to gunslingers! This can be the worst time for photography. It is the same light you see in office spaces with overhead lighting. It will give your portraits unflattering raccoon eyes like the image above.

What are you to do then? There are two easy solutions. Turn on your flash is one possibility. The second is head into the shade outside and use window light indoors.

3. Window light

Window light is beautiful directional light. What’s directional? This means the light is coming from one direction, one source.

What we too often see is a person standing with their back to a bank of windows with their faces dark or the outdoors completely white. Instead, place your subject perpendicular to the window using the light to illuminate one side of their face. You can use window light with equally effective results whether photographing a person or an object.

Window light - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

You’ll want to try using this kind of light when the sun is not shining directly through the window. Pick a cloudy day, use a north-facing window, or shoot after the sun has moved overhead away from the window.

4. Stormy weather

The light changes as you move into and out of a storm. Watch how the color of flowers, leaves, and even cars comes to life during these times of shifting weather. You can add saturation in Photoshop to images today, but you will find it far more realistic if you can capture the saturated color you enjoy at the end of a rainfall.

After the storm - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

And don’t be shy about heading out into a snowfall or rainstorm with your camera in tow. You will discover a whole new world most folks hideaway from. You will bear witness to people and scenes not normally seen. I guarantee people will exclaim, “Wow, how did you get that shot?!”

5. The Seasons

Your observations of light will inform you of many things. I imagine you will start to see things I don’t see as well. That’s my hope. One other thing you might observe is that light changes over the course of the year too.

Fall color - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

For example, the sun’s position in the sky changes. During the summer here in southern Ontario the sun rises directly out my back door facing east. Come November, that same ball of fire is rising about 45 degrees further south or to my right. So, it is now lighting things from a very different angle than it was in June, creating different shapes and textures on objects in the same space. How cool is that!

Another piece of the lighting puzzle I’ve discovered is the light becomes clearer and sharper almost overnight moving from August to September. The muggy air of August creates a softer light because it is filled with particulate scattering the light around. As the air cools in September the air is fresher and cleaner giving us a sharper light. This is in southern Ontario, but I guarantee the same effects will occur at some time in your neck of the woods.

Brave the weather

People in these parts complain when it hits -20 Celsius. That’s the time to grab your camera and head out into the world. We get a lot of gray weather during our winters. Ninety percent of the time when it’s very cold we get crisp, clean, beautiful light with these gorgeous blue skies.

Cold morning - Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos

I recognize I’m talking about my home, but I ask you to start observing what effect the seasons and the weather have on the light in your area. Which times excite you visually? When does the color jump out at you? Perhaps you like the softer light?

Conclusion

I encourage you to observe and then explore different light to discover your preferences. If you’re excited, you will start creating stronger images you want to share.

Let’s finish with a challenge to share. It’s hard to put your photographs out there. The thing is, with whatever medium you choose to express yourself, you bring a unique vision to the world.

What is truly fantastic about photography is that seven or 70 of us can photograph the same scene, and we will typically all come up with a different perspective. When we share, we learn. My recommendation? Be yourself and share. Start by posting an image in the comments below and tell us about the light you used to create it.

The post Exploring the Fundamentals of Light to Improve Your Photos by David McCammon appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Microsoft Photos Companion app offers easy photo transfer from smartphones to PC

17 Feb

Microsoft has launched a new app to facilitate easy photo transfer from mobile devices to a Windows 10 PC, without using the cloud. Photos Companion is available for iOS and Android and deposits your mobile images in the Windows Photos app on the desktop or laptop PC using just a WiFi network.

To get started, you have to scan a QR code in the Windows Photos desktop app to pair smartphone and computer. Both devices have to be connected to the same WiFi network, which in turn allows you to send individual images or entire batches across very quickly. It is, in essence, the exact same system as Apple’s AirDrop, but limited to photos and videos.

Pairing isn’t permanent, and will have to be re-established for each sharing operation. Still, that’s easily done and the app looks like an interesting solution for collecting media files from multiple mobile devices on a single PC for working on collaborative projects.

Once on the PC, images and videos can be shared and edited in the Windows Photo app as usual. If Photos Companion sounds like an app that could potentially improve your workflow, you can find more information and app store links on the Microsoft website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

15 Feb

Are you passionate about portrait photography? Do you love sharing images of your trips and landscape photos? Or maybe you spend your free time capturing the streets of your city?

Let me tell you something you might not know about yourself. Every now and then you are a landscape photographer, too. Everyone is. Let’s be honest, you couldn’t resist that beautiful mountain view you photographed a few weeks ago on a hike. Your social media feeds are full of your friends’ photos of canyons, lakes, and forests. Even your grandma sent you a picture of a sunset from her backyard the other day.

01 Sunset in Ilulissat Icefjord Greenland - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

The amount of landscapes captured and uploaded every day is overwhelming. So how can you make people stop and look at YOUR images? How do you make YOUR landscape photos stand out?

Here are some useful tips and tricks to help you. Save them for later, and the next time you are photographing a beautiful view make sure to follow them. You will have a much better chance of taking a good picture and making it noticed.

1. Less is more

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

011 Greenland midnight sun - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

This famous quote also applies very well to landscape photography. I know you are excited to show the whole world how beautiful nature is around you. However, often showing everything is equal to showing nothing.

For instance, look at the image below. It is simple and straightforward. You clearly know what the photographer tried to show.

Now, imagine there is a road below the greenery, two smaller mountains on the right and little pond on the left. You could capture all of that instead; it would give much more information about the location. However, then your viewer wouldn’t know where to look.

002 Bad weather Iceland - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

Your viewer is exposed to thousands of images every day (social media, streets banners, TV, online advertising, etc.). Don’t give him any more work. Seeing your photo should be an effortless and enjoyable process. Here is how to get rid of the unnecessary parts of your images:

If you have a zoom lens, zoom into the frame.
Reposition yourself. Sometimes you have to walk closer to your subject or choose a different point of view.
As a last resort – crop your image later. Generally, It’s not advisable to crop more than 20% of your images. This rule will keep you more disciplined about your choices in the field. Also, it will help you keep your images in high resolution in case you decide to print them one day or participate in photography contests. (Many contests don’t allow cropping more than 20%).

2. Avoid distractions

Now you’ve decided which part of the scene is the most compelling. But before you click the shutter, make sure that these technicalities are in check:

A) Check that the horizon is straight. Turn on the grid in your camera to help you with that.

003 Nepal tilted horizon - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

004 Nepal straight horizon - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

B) Position your subject away from the middle of the frame. Most of the time you will find yourself following the rule of thirds

005 Rule of thirds precise - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

.Sometimes following the rule, precisely.

006 Rule of thirds approximate - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

Sometimes, not so much.

C) Get your settings right to avoid overexposed, underexposed, blurry, or noisy images.

3. Look for color contrast

This is an extremely important concept that you need to be familiar with.

Our brains are wired in a way that when we look at a picture, we first respond to contrasts in color and light, then to the shape, size and other characteristics of the scene.

Make sure you know the theory of color contrast. The general rule is that cold and warm colors work well together. Here are some examples:

007 color contrast moon iceberg - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

008 color contrast aurora - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

4. Test a thumbnail of your image

In a perfect world, you would make a large format print of your image and people would come and spend hours savoring every detail of it. In reality, your picture will be one of many tiny thumbnails on someone’s social media feed. (If you don’t post your images online, you can skip this part.)

A great exercise is to look at your image as a small thumbnail. Can you tell what’s on it? Would you pay attention to it if you saw it on your Instagram timeline or would you scroll past it? You’ll notice, that simple images with high color and/or light contrast stand out the most.

Can you guess which of the images from the grid below got the most amount of interaction on Instagram?

009 thumbnail grid - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out

5. Is the image good or does it make YOU feel good?

You just came back from a trip and that sunset you observed with your partner was amazing. You still remember the sound of the waves and the warm wind coming from the sea. Time to share that memory with the world!

99% of the time, that’s fine if you want a snapshot of a holiday, but not if you want people to see an artistic value in it. A great image should be great by itself, regardless of what emotions you have attached to it.

A good practice is to look through your photos weeks, or sometimes months after you took them. You will be surprised at how your selection will change compared to the day of the shoot.

Here are a couple more images that follow the tips above.

010 iceland beach - 5 Tricks to Make Your Landscape Photos Stand Out