Common Photo Foul-Ups

 

Make images that are as bright as your memories by changing the way you use the camera. 

 

By Knolan Benfield

February 2015

 

If vacation pictures bring back good memories and make us smile, then why don’t my friends want to look at them? Past experience is probably responsible for their reluctance. Looking at others’ photos filled with foul-ups is boring, and it can be downright embarrassing. 

 

So, let’s look at some common picture-taking mistakes and find out how to fix them. Then our friends will smile right along with us when they see our pictures. 

 

1. Dead center. A rifle shot dead center in a target is a good shot. A similar shot using a camera is just as deadly. It kills any interest in the resulting photograph. A lot of those can bore your friends to death. 

 

Visual impact in a picture draws and holds attention. But how do we add impact to our photos? 

 

Let’s say you want to take a picture of a deer crossing the road in front of you. Instead of aiming the camera like a gun, frame the photo so that the deer is to one side of center. Now the road leads the eye into the distance, giving the photo a three-dimensional feeling, but since the deer is large and dominant, the eye comes back to it. 

 

Only a slight shift in aiming the camera adds depth (impact) to your photo. It makes your friends wish they had been there.

 

2. Split horizons. A horizon that splits a picture across the center is as boring as the dead-center shot. But where should we put that line?

 

Say you’re at the beach. It’s a dark and stormy day. (Sorry, couldn’t help that.) The power of the sea is awe-inspiring. Capturing that in a photo is easier than it may seem. Split the photo equally between sky and water and you’ve got zip, but place the horizon so that only a little sky shows across the very top, and the viewer’s attention is forced onto the mighty waves. 

 

Or, frame the photo so that only a small fraction of the ocean shows at the bottom edge, and the sky becomes dominant. The vastness of the sea is illustrated, but the power is now in the storm clouds.

 

By the way: Don’t put your camera away when the sun isn’t shining. Especially moving and powerful pictures can be made in bad weather. Just carry a plastic bag big enough to protect your camera.

 

3. Far, far away. Snapshots are valuable to the people who know, not necessarily see, what is in them. If you want your photos to communicate what you see, then it is necessary to learn to see what the camera sees and how to control it.

 

“Look at this picture of my granddaughter. I made that red dress she’s wearing.”

 

“Oh, you mean that little red dot in the center of the picture across the yard in front of those bushes?”

 

The grandmother could “see” the child and the red dress, because she knew it was her. That’s how the eye sees as compared to the camera. The camera sees all that’s in front of it equally. The eye (mind) of the person taking the picture usually sees only what they are concentrating on, to the exclusion of all else that’s in the viewfinder.

 

Almost without exception, the more the subject fills the frame, the more effective or pleasing the photo will be. Always get closer. This is probably the most important bit of information in this article.

 

Naturally, getting closer can be dangerous advice if you are photographing a grizzly bear, standing on a ledge, or watching a bank robbery in progress. Those are good times for telephoto lenses, and the longer the better. But no matter how you do it, whether you use long lenses or close-up lenses, whether you zoom in or walk nearer, closer is usually better.

 

All right, so how do we “get closer” to a mountain landscape? 

 

Closer means exclusion. We “get closer” to the mountains by zooming in on a limited section of them and excluding what does not add to the picture. The temptation is to include as much as possible, but this reduces the grandiose mountains to a tiny ripple across the photo.

 

4. Standing room only. Most photos are taken at eye level while standing. This makes for a collection of dull, similar shots. 

 

Imagine the added impact if the photo of the little girl in the red dress had been made not just closer but also at her eye level.  Pictures of little children made from an adult’s eye level show tops of little heads, but make them from their eye level and the photos are filled with cute little faces. Now that’s impact!

 

So if lower is good, higher must be also, right? It can be. A view of couples on a dance floor taken from up on the stage or while standing in a chair helps capture the atmosphere of the occasion. Have your camera ready and shoot quickly, because you may be asked to get back down off that stage pretty quickly (or, just ask first). It was worth a shot. 

 

5. Unrelentingly horizontal. The camera setting calls horizontal “landscape,” but that doesn’t mean all landscapes should be horizontal. Some subjects all but demand to be in vertical shots — narrow waterfalls, single tall trees, the Washington Monument, etc. 

After you’ve made that obligatory horizontal shot, take another picture of the same subject, only this time make it work as a vertical (or, as your camera may call it, “portrait”). This is a good lifetime exercise to keep your photos fit. 

 

6. What chicken? While I was teaching photography at a community college, one of my students showed another the pictures he had taken at the zoo. The other student asked, “What’s that chicken doing in with the elephants?”

 

“What chicken?” replied the photographer.

 

This is another example of how our eyes and our camera see things differently. The man who made the photo never noticed the chicken down in the corner of the frame, but his camera saw it as equally important as the elephant.

 

Check the edges and the corners; pay attention to what the camera sees. Watch for a palm tree sticking out of your kid’s head or the beautiful girl in an itsy-bitsy bikini just to the left of your wife. It’s best to “clean up” the shot before something ruins the picture or your marriage.

 

7. The compulsory “in-front-of” shot. You know the one: Your family is posed in front of the U.S. Capitol or the fountain on the square. While there may be many ways to do this shot right, there are certainly at least two ways to do it wrong.

 

Wrong way 1: You walk way up the National Mall, leaving your family on the back steps of the Capitol, and snap the shot. When showing this photo, it is necessary to point out which small clump of tourists is your clump, because, like the little girl in the red dress, they are way too far away to be easily identified.

 

Wrong way 2:  You walk way up the Mall, bringing your family with you this time, and pose them in front of the Capitol. Now, it is necessary to point to the little dome peeking out from behind them and tell folks what it is.

 

Correct way:  You walk way up the Mall, bringing your family with you, and you pose them in front of the Capitol, except you compose the photo so that your family is shown waist up in one side of the picture and the Capitol is on the other. Everyone can see the family and the Capitol. You don’t need to explain anything, except to recall how hot it was that day. 

 

8. Backlit botch-ups. Photos of folks in front of windows (or in front of a sunset at the Grand Canyon) are tricky. If the background takes up a lot of the photo, the camera will expose for the background, rendering your folks as fuzzy semi-silhouettes in gray. 

 

Unless you want this effect, set your camera to “fill flash,” and the problem is solved. The fill flash should compensate for the backlight, giving you a well-exposed photo. (Good reason to take your camera manual on vacation.)

 

9. Deep shadows or slits instead of eyes. Just as fill flash fixes backlit subjects, it also will solve the problem of deep shadows where the eyes should be. Outside, just turning on the flash may solve the shadowed eyes problem without having to set the camera for fill flash. Take a shot and see. (Oh, the delight of digital.) 

 

If the person you are photographing is squinting into the sun, which hides their eyes and ruins their expression (they are likely also complaining about this), turn them so they are not facing into the sun. Then, you guessed it; it’s fill flash to the rescue. 

 

10. Regrets. We saw the most amazing tiny wood carvings of horses. It’s also amazing that we didn’t take any close-up pictures of them. 

 

The folk dancers wore stunning costumes, and we did make pictures of them. And the food there looked almost as good as it tasted; but, alas, we didn’t make any pictures of the food. We just ate it.

 

Wish we had taken more pictures, a lot more. Things like long shots of the campgrounds (not just our site and RV); places where we ate; the people we saw; and how they live. 

 

Make a resolution. On your next trip, get high (figuratively speaking), get low, get close, get it out of the center, and don’t split the middle. Think vertical and fill flash. Watch for what the camera sees that the eye may not, like chickens and bikinis. 

 

Keep your camera close and capture all those good memories.

Advantages of a cell phone: You almost always have it with you; you need to carry only one device; it is easy to use; it offers instant picture-sharing.

 

Advantages of a camera: It produces sharper pictures; offers more control over quality; can make pictures in lower light; has optical zoom (not digital zoom, which lowers clarity); possibly includes a viewfinder. 

 

Viewfinder: Most digital cameras have eliminated the viewfinder, but advanced models still have them. A viewfinder is a big help when the sun is shining on your LCD screen; plus, it is easier to hold the camera still when it is up to your eye.

 

Quality: The amount of detail that the camera or phone or tablet can capture is called resolution, which is measured in pixels. The more pixels, the more detail is captured. 

 

Resolution, usually referred to in megapixels, is the number of pixels used to produce an image. The higher the resolution, the bigger print of the photo that can be made, and the more the image can be cropped without becoming fuzzy.

 

Practically every digital camera sold today has all the megapixels needed for almost any use.

 

Digital camera settings that affect quality: 

 

Size, which is determined by the number of megapixels. The higher the number, the sharper the photo. Smaller megapixel settings cause a loss of sharpness, but more of those types of photos can fit on a memory card. 

 

The setting called “quality” can be set to Fine (enlargements), Normal (suitable for most uses), and Basic (good for email and Web pages). The quality you need is based on the ultimate use of the photo.

 

Regardless of the device, use a high ISO setting (sensitivity to light) to minimize camera movement and to shoot in lower light.

 

Keep your battery charged and your power dry.