Composing a Harmonic Landscape

I love nature. There is nothing quite like looking at the horizon and being totally overwhelmed with the landscape. I’ve been to some awe-inspiring places and have always attempted to capture the essence with photographs. However, when I get home and look at the pictures they evoke fond memories but not the sense of wonderment. Most of them are just average outdoor pictures. As the memory of actually being there fades, the pictures become even less interesting.

Years ago when we bought our first digital camera, I thought my pictures would improve. They have to a degree, but I find myself wanting more. The reason for the improvement is that with a digital camera it isn’t wasteful to take several pictures of the same scene and delete all but the best one. I thought being able to crop the photo and zoom in after the fact would be the answer I was looking for. While these edits make the pictures better it doesn’t bring them to the level I was hoping they would. To me, the photograph should make me want to go to the place it was taken, not because of a memory but because of the scenery.

This summer we are heading west. The primary purpose for our upcoming vacation is to visit family but we plan on hitting several National Parks as well as the coast of Oregon. I want the pictures that I take on this trip to be fabulous. I want to be able to frame them and hang them on the wall. As we walk through Redwood National Forest I know I am going to see things that today I can only imagine. Taking pictures in a forest is quite different than taking them out my front door. The day after the forest we are heading to the coast of Oregon. Is taking pictures of the beach significantly different than taking pictures of the forest? Are there tips that will help me take better pictures in both of these environments? I would like to improve my ability to take a good picture of a landscape. The United States of America is home to some amazing views and I am going to have the opportunity to see some of them. The key to better pictures is knowledge.

For 30 days I have been taking pictures and editing them using Paint Shop Pro. This has forced me to spend time both taking pictures and learning to use photo-editing software. However, sometimes I feel like I am shooting blindfolded. When I am taking pictures of the surroundings how can I choose the best picture to take? I think improving the actual composition of the pictures and using the correct settings on my camera when I click the button to take the picture will have a huge impact on the quality of the pictures I take.

Determining what picture to take is the first thing I need to learn. John Hedgecoe, author of the ‘how to’ book Photographing Landscapes, states that visualizing how the camera will record what you are seeing is the most important skill for a photographer to develop (32). It is a talent to be able to take our three-dimensional world and predict how that will look in two dimensions. To work on this skill I am going to take a picture of a sunrise outside of my front door, print an 8x10 of this picture, and compare it to the three-dimensional landscape every day for a week. This will help me translate the world onto a piece of photo paper.

In The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography, Robert Caputo recommends thinking about what makes a particular location desirable to photograph. This may take some analysis of the area and what drew you to it. Since there is not normally a big rush to photograph a landscape, he recommends walking the scene and looking through the viewfinder to find the best location and angle for the picture (14). He also recommends practicing these skills to develop the ability to find interesting angles for your pictures (15). Practicing is something practical I can do to improve my proficiency with this skill, which will lead to better compositions. Alain Briot points out that not only do we see in three dimensions but also experience a location with all five of our senses. As landscape photographers we need to practice translating as much of that experience as possible into our two dimensional picture (18). This is what I am looking for in my photographs. I want to feel like I am actually at the place where the picture was taken.

One of the rules of composition for landscape photography is the Rule of Thirds. Caputo recommends the following “Imagine that your viewfinder has lines dividing the space into three horizontal and three vertical fields of nine equal-size rectangles. To use the rule of thirds, place your subject at one of the ‘sweet spots’ where a vertical and a horizontal line intersect.” (49). Fitzharris suggests the horizon at one of the “third” positions (86). My mom’s digital camera does have the lines on the viewing screen to make using the rule of thirds more natural.
Another important element in the composition of landscape photographs is color. “Color evokes the greatest emotional reaction of any graphic element,” states Fitzharris (83). If that is true, we need to spend some serious time considering it. Many of my recent landscape pictures have been gray due to our snow and weather. However, as Hedgecoe points out, the use of monochromatic color can be effective by balancing textures and tones (59).

The word photography comes from the Greek words and means “writing with light” (Briot 47). I have been to a photography class before and have heard that light is the most important aspect for a good picture. This has been something I have found difficult to apply, mostly because light is difficult to control. I can’t make a cloud move in front of the sun. Briot lists the three rules of light with respect to photography as the quality of light, reflected light, and the intensity of light. For landscape photographers the quality of light is the most important rule. The larger the source of light the softer the light. This rule is why the best times to take landscape pictures is at sunrise, sunset, and on overcast days (49). The solution seems to be adaptation to the light that exists since you can’t change it. Caputo adds that light is always changing and affects the color and mood of a scene and should be chosen carefully (84).

I am coming to the realization that taking excellent pictures isn’t as easy as it seems at first glance. It is much more than point and shoot. I can see the landscape pictures I have previously taken were a result of be being somewhere at a specific time. Not much thought has gone into the actual composition of the pictures. Just because I am in a beautiful place doesn’t automatically mean the camera will see things the same way. Improving my ability to “see” like a camera as well as using these tips and rules will enhance my pictures, hopefully making them worthy of a frame.

Works Cited

Briot, Alain. Mastering Landscape Photography, The Luminous-Landscape Essays. Ed. Gerhard Rossbach. Santa Barbara, CA. Rocky Nook Inc. 2007.

Caputo, Robert. The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography. Washington D.C. National Geographic. 2007.

Fitzharris, Tim. National Audubon Society Guide to Landscape Photography. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books Inc. 2007

Hedgecoe, John. Photographing landscapes. London: Collins & Brown Limited, 2000.
“Landscape Photography: Capturing Scenery at its Best.”

Kaleidoscope

When I talk about my pictures I often mention that I want to hang them on the wall. I want them to be worthy of taking the time to frame them and look at them daily. When I say things like that I have pictures of the Smokey Mountains, the beach, or Yellowstone in my mind. However, the effect I played with has turned some plain pictures into some cool abstract art.

The first picture I did this with is of the red doors on St. Johns Lutheran Church downtown. The doors have always stood out to me so I thought I would take a picture. Initially I was going to try to remove the silver signs from the door. That turned out to be a big failure so I kept trying other effects. Below is the original picture.



I used the kaleidoscope effect and thought the results were neato.



Since the red doors turned out so cool I tried it on a picture of my backyard.



If you look really closely you can see the trees on the “arms” of the kaleidoscope.



The last picture I did this to was the macro picture of the purple flower.





All in all I think this a really cool effect.

My Backyard

I really enjoy our yard. There is nothing fancy about it but it relaxing to look at our yard after being cooped up all winter. I took a picture of our backyard as sunset. I tried to use the rule of thirds using the horizon and the tree but I’m not sure how well I did. I probably could have cropped the picture to make it a bit better.



Under the Effects menu is a submenu of Art Media Effects. I used the colored chalk effect for this picture. I think it makes the picture more interesting. Some of the other art media effects are pencil, colored pencil, and charcoal.

More 801

I was driving down Grand Avenue in downtown Des Moines heading west when I had to stop at a stop light and had the thought to take a picture. I rolled down the window stuck my arm out the window and snapped a picture of the tallest building in our great state. I can only imagine what the other drivers were thinking of me. Here is the picture that I took.



I didn't really have any idea what to do with this picture. I did a lot of experimenting. Here are a few of the results that I liked enough to save. This picture I used the Flood Fill tool and colored some parts of the building.



Then I found this Posterize effect and I liked the result better than the Flood Fill tool. When using the Flood Fill I got to choose what colors I wanted to use and where I wanted to use them. With the posterize effect you select it and the photo is edited.

Fill Flash

Spring is coming! I know this because last night I was out on the deck and I heard birds singing. It made me so happy. Anyhow, while I was on the deck I snapped a few pictures off to the north. Most of this view is my neighbors yard, the field behind his house, and the tree line by the creek. I actually saw some blue sky so I wanted to capture it in my picture.

I wrote a research paper about landscape photography and one of the “rules” I learned was the rule of thirds. I tried to use it when I took this picture - two-thirds sky and one-third land.



When I brought the picture up on my computer, it was a bit dark. It was evening so maybe it was too dark to take a picture beyond what my flash range. In the adjust menu of Paint Shop Pro is a Fill Flash feature that adds flash to the picture. I think it helped this picture out quite a bit. It brightened the grass and the sky. It was also a quick push of a button to do. I like how many of these features can improve a picture so quickly and easily.

Darkness

I went into work EARLY one day this past week. I decided to snap a picture of 801 Grand in the dark. The picture is below. It is pretty dark and really not a good picture.



There is a setting on my camera for darker picture. The symbol is a moon. Probably because of the cool moon rises that people (like me) always want to take a pictures of. This setting slows down the shutter speed. I took another picture of 801 Grand using this setting. The result is a really blurry picture but it is lighter.



I took another picture with this setting and it is better but I think a tripod is a necessity for this setting.

Positive....Um, I mean Negative

I went out to Yellow Banks Park and took this picture of the landscape. When I opened it up I thought it was a pretty cool picture and played around with different ways to edit it. However, it is a very gray picture. When I turned it black and white you could hardly see a change. Most of the effects I use are under the Adjust or Effects menu. While playing around I opened the image menu. I clicked the “Negative image” and got the result below. I like the change, especially the top of the tree against the sky and the bottom third of the picture. I think the middle of the picture, in both versions, gets muddled.



I added the "negative" picture frame at the end to finish it off and because I thought it was clever.

Playing with Color

I took a picture of some shadows of a tree. The picture is quite simple with the shadows on the snow. One of the menus is Hue and Saturation. The option I used to edit this picture is the Hue Map. There are 10 color slides that can be adjusted to change the hue of the picture. I played around with it quite a bit and in my picture in changed the color of the shadows. I like the effect. I did this twice. One of the pictures I edited to have purple shadows and the other is brownish.

Graphic Rocks

I decided to take a picture of the rock wall outside our basement. It is on the north side of the house so there isn’t much sun these days. It is just a picture of a few boulders with snow on them. Nothing I would normally take a picture of but I thought it may be interesting to see what I could do with it using some effects. The first picture is below. I attempted to use a lot of different effects and I lot of them evened out the color and texture. In the geometric effects menu (which is where I found the horizontal and vertical perspective) there is a pentagon option. I used that with a wrap edge. I like the results. What do you think?

Color Balance

This post is a basic study in Color Balance. In PSP there is an option called Color Balance. You have a slide that you can move from cool to warm. To demonstrate the difference I took a picture of a snow bank and edited it once with the slide halfway on the warm side and then edited another halfway on the cold side. I thought a snow picture would show the effect clearly since most of the picture is white. This effect could be used for slight adjustments to a picture or more significantly, as I have here, for a more artistic effect.




Most of the time involved with this feature was spent experimenting with the settings. It doesn't take too long to apply.

Picture Frames

The snow is melting and 95% of Iowa rejoices. Today’s picture is of the creek that goes through my front yard. You are getting a pretty good idea of the views from my house and neighborhood and I’m sure there will be more to come. I like this picture how it is, so I decided to use the picture frame feature in PSP. There are a lot of different picture frame options but I chose 3 to show you here.

Here is the original picture.



Here I used the "oval" picture frame.



Here is one of my favorite frames. It is called transparent.



This frame is called paintbrush.



The frame are really easy to add. There is a large variety and I think they can jazz up a picture quite a bit.

Macro

Have you ever wanted to take a picture of a flower or a bug? You get really close to the subject and take the picture and it turns out blurry. So you keep moving the camera back and end up quitting in frustration. The Macro mode is the answer to this issue. This mode allows a close up picture to be taken. On my camera the symbol for the Macro mode is a flower and all I had to do is press the button to turn it on and off. Below is a picture of a flower without the macro and then without changing distances I turned the Macro on and took another picture.





The differences are amazing. If you would like to see more pictures taken with Macro I found a blog (http://lisaschaos.com) that has a blog carnival each Monday called Macro Monday. There are some really cool pictures over there and I encourage you to check them out.

On a side note - Happy 5th Birthday Robby!

Creativity + Rules + Breaking the Rules = Art

I’ve always been a bit envious of artists. The people who make drawing, painting, writing, or sculpting seem like second nature. I have never been one of those people. My art is concrete. I like science and math. One of the artists that I admire is my sister-in-law, Doris. Her artwork is varied and outstanding. She has a natural talent in a number of areas. She draws, quilts, and takes pictures. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in art and design from Iowa State University and with a master’s degree in art history from the University of South Carolina. I talked to Doris to determine what makes an artist and artist and what defines art.

Ever since she was a little girl Doris loved drawing. Her mom tells this story of how she would draw pictures behind all of the doors and sign her name like an artist. The punch line is that she would then accuse her little brother of doing the drawing. She was quiet and introverted and says art was “part of my nature”. In kindergarten her drawings were used for the PTA newsletters and this is when she started receiving feedback from adults. It is also when she realized she was good. When I asked her if she thought she was an artist she hesitated before she replied, “Yes, I have the eye of an artist and I think like an artist”. I asked her what the hesitation was for and she said she doesn’t view herself as a practicing artist. To her being an artist has been woven into her being and it cannot be separated. However, she isn’t disciplined with her art any longer. She doesn’t draw regularly like she once did. She doesn’t “practice.
So what makes someone an artist? Is it innate or learned? I asked Doris what she thought and she said “innate”. She elaborated, “creativity has to be nurtured”, she compared it to a seed needing water, sunlight, and a lot of positive energy. The spirit of an artist can be squashed. It doesn’t depend on talent but on creation and creativity. I wonder where that puts me. I consider myself an idea girl. Someone who has ideas to be created but I don’t have the ability to make them come to fruition.

I explain that I am going to take a picture each day and edit them so I can learn how to use my camera, my photo editing software, and take great pictures that I can hang on my wall. We discuss the different types of photography and if they are art. Her assessment was “all photography, even portraits, can be art if there is creativity”. I asked for advice or rules I should consider when taking a picture. She went through centering the subject and lighting. She suggested thinking about the composition of the photograph including “the elements of shape, form, color, and light”. Then she threw a curveball and said “an artist basically takes the instructions and throws them out the window and does it their own way”.

We were sitting in a restaurant and there were three pictures hanging on the wall right by our table. I looked at them and asked, “What makes these art”? One of the photos was of stores along a street. There were cars parked on the street but they were cut off in the picture. She gave this as an example of not following the rules. Another picture was of lanterns and the primary lantern was off center. She pointed out that a rule was to center the subject but that in this photograph that rule was broken and it added some interest to the picture.

Rules. Breaking them. Doing things my own way. All within the context of learning about my camera and photo editing. If I really think about it I can become overwhelmed. This is going to be a challenging pursuit. I am going to work on developing an artist’s eye and thoughtfully consider when a picture may be more interesting if it isn’t governed by hard and fast rules. The only thing that is comforting right now is that “it isn’t about talent”.

Morning Bright

This picture was taken from the front of my house at sunrise as I was leaving for work. I was in the car ready to back it out of the garage and as I looked out the rear view mirror I thought it may be a good picture for the day. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like a good sunrise or sunset picture. I like the colors in the picture but think it may have been a better picture if I had taken it 10 minutes later. My main issue is that the picture is too dark. The trees down by the creek are a jumbled mess of dark.



If you use a high contrast the picture looks edited. Below is a picture where I set the brightness to 35 and the contrast to 35 so you can see the difference.

This didn't take too long to do and with practice it would be quicker. Most of the time spent was the trial and error to get the settings to the point where I liked them the best.

More Perspective

At church I took a picture of this stained glass window. Yeah, some color instead of the constant gray we have been seeing outside in Des Moines and therefore in the pictures on this blog. When searching through the effects I noticed they have both vertical and horizontal perspective effects. I decided to edit this picture once with the vertical perspective and once with the horizontal perspective so I could visualize what this does to the original picture. Before I used the perspective I cropped the picture to right around the window.

Horizontal

Vertical

There are different edge modes that can be used. I used color and left the default black as the color choice. I like this selection for this picture since it doesn’t detract from all the colors in the window. The other choices for the edge modes are wrap and repeat.


Wrap

Repeat

The wrap edge mode just shows the picture repeating while the repeat edge mode seems to use the very edge of the picture to fill in the extra space. I don't think this picture shows the repeat feature very well.

Perspective

This is another picture of a building in downtown Des Moines that I took from the skywalk. I would like to get outside and take more pictures downtown but folks, it has been cold and it is such a pain to bundle up. On the bright side taking pictures from the skywalk gives me ample opportunity to explore the different ways to clean up the photos.

I couldn’t get a good angle for my picture since I was limited by the skywalk. I just took a few pictures hoping to be able to edit them into something worthwhile. In the original picture you can see the angle. I am not cropping the picture for this post because I think you can see what the perspective tool does.



Notice in the original the windows are angled and after the perspective edit it looks like I took the picture from straight in front of the building.



Here is the final edit of the picture after cropping the picture, using the high pass sharpen feature, and adding a border.

Straightening a Photo

Sometimes having a picture at an unusual angle is cool. It can cause the picture to be more artistic. However, sometimes the picture may just look odd and you want to straighten it. I took this picture from the car (no, I was not driving) and the angle is just off.



I don’t know what I am going to do to edit a photo until I open it on my computer. When I opened this picture of an evergreen tree I thought it was cool but that the angle detracted from the tree. I had never used the straighten tool before and I am happy that it was so easy. The tool is on the toolbar and it puts a line on the picture. I then moved the line so it was parallel with the horizon in the picture and the tree was straightened. The thing about using this tool is that the picture is automatically cropped. It doesn’t matter so much in this picture of my tree but it could be a problem with some pictures.



This was a very quick edit and a useful tip in making an ok picture better.

Weaving the Landscape with Buffalo

Did you know that right here in central Iowa we have a National Wildlife Refuge? If you live in central Iowa and haven’t been out to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge near Prairie City is it a trip I highly recommend. It may be a bit more pleasant when the weather is nicer if you like walking the trails but I like seeing the buffalo in the snow and I had a picture to take. My family and I drove out to see if we could find any buffalo. There is an auto tour that is pretty well maintained. In addition to buffalo, the wildlife refuge also has a herd of elk. There is also a very nice learning center that is free to the public. It is a great place to take kids. They also have activities throughout the year. You can check it out here - http://www.tallgrass.org/

We saw a few elk on our trip around the refuge but we hit the jackpot with the herd of buffalo. We saw 2 groups of buffalo that were separated by a hill. Each group had between 20 and 25 buffalo. We saw them butt heads and dig in the snow.



I took several pictures of the buffalo herds. Since it was snowy and an overcast day the picture is kind of gray. In fact while I was editing the picture I turned it black and white and you couldn’t tell much of a difference. I played around with some different techniques and found the weave texture, which I think, works for this picture. I like how it adds interest to the picture while keeping the buffalo as a focus of the picture.

Windows Windows Everywhere

We went to the Civic Center to the production of “Frog and Toad are Friends”. When we go to the Civic Center we park in the ramp on 3rd and Court Avenue since it is connected by a skywalk. From the parking ramp I took a picture of this building on Court Avenue and if you look closely you can see Johnny’s Hall of Fame.




The first thing I did was crop the picture. I really like the windows of this building so I got rid of most of the stuff around the building. Under Image Effects is an option of seamless tiling. I used this option and selected a corner tiling method, bi-directional direction, and a curved corner. I don’t know why I picked these they just sounded good. Below is the picture after the tiling.

I like this picture but it seems dark. I decided to add some fill flash and it lightened the picture quite nicely. This process didn’t take too long but I found myself doing a little trial and error to turn the picture into something interesting.