So recently I’ve been looking at my photos a little more objectively, trying to imagine the steps needed to take to turn a good photo into a great one, I have two examples I will put in here.
For a while it felt like my shots were missing something, I don’t know what, but they’re just missing this thing that I can’t put into words, it’s hard to tell if that’s because I feel inexperienced, or if I’m being my own worst critic or perhaps simply because the shots aren’t all that great to begin with.
Here’s an example, a photo I took of my fiancée and our dogs when we were in Cornwall last:
100mm, f6.3, ISO 800, 1/1000s
Trying to get our dogs to sit for a photo is an achievement enough as it is, but I really liked this shot, the shutter speed had to be quite high because of the wind, I didn’t want any blurry hair or fur, so the iso had to go up a little to compensate.
Above is my first edit of the photo, I was happy how clear and sharp the subjects were, I could of lowered the f stop to make them pop a little more, but that’s down to being a inexperience I guess!
A little less in the highlights, turning the contrast up a little, only a little otherwise the skin colour starts to change, masking the background to add slight blur to add to the pop, a vignette to help draw your attention to the centre.
The photo looks good, but, not as great as I want, then I decided to go for the crop, pictured below.
Now this final product is something I’m happy with, the final results of what I was looking for in the first place.
This is one of those instances where using generative ai filling-in, is actually not too bad, so I had to extend the original image past its limit and ai filled in the blank, then I took over and helped blend them together.
The use of ai was to purely put the subjects in the best position for the crop, using the rule of thirds, I have my fiancée’s face in the top right, Rufus in the bottom right and Freddie in the bottom left third of the photo and that also plays into the triangle rule nicely.
50mm, f4.5, ISO 250, 1/1000s
As you can see in the phot above, my fiancée and I are centre framed, my camera was on a tripod taking interval shots every couple of seconds.
There’s a few shots that I really like from this moment, the only thing I think that would of made this one perfect would be if my right hand wasn’t covering up her engagement ring, but these weren’t static poses, we were moving and just enjoying the time on the beach together with our doggos, when we have another moment like that I’ll be sure to pause and really think about the pose and to make sure nothing like that is hidden, but heyho, that’s life, live and learn.
This was my first edit of the shot.
What I like about this, I like the colour is more evenly spread and that it gives a nostalgic feeling.
What I don’t like about this edit, the cropping, or lack of is a better word, I feel it doesn’t focus on the subjects, just more of a photo where your eyes go over the whole photo, and that is probably due to the colour scheme to it too, everything feels a little “samey”, yes there’s a little pop, but it could be better.
So I thought about what edits would make the photo feel more professional, I took away the colour mapping, cropped, masked the background in a gradient for a little more blur and corrected some colour to make the subjects stand out stronger and I ended up with this shot.
And finally, I feel like this is a photo I can be proud of.
It feels more professional, a stronger focus, a better connection between the subjects and a clearer focus and facial expressions.
Never be afraid to take a step back in order to develop further, there were no mistakes here, just learning curves to understand and grow from.
Thank you for reading another blog,
See ya in the next one,
Richard
Pixeled World Photos.
