The art of digital photography

The art of digital photography

A shot should convey a certain meaning to the viewer. 

Photography is a way of capturing the dynamic, three-dimensional world around you in a static frame, a single shot in which the elements remain motionless. This is because, adding to the three dimensions of length, breadth and height, there's another dimension, time, that results into this dynamic nature of the fast-changing world around us. Thus, photography is a difficult process, far more difficult than it seems at first.

However, this is where the 'art' of photography jumps into rescue. You can use the 'sense' of your photo to convey a special meaning to the elements displayed within it. This 'sense' can actually be used to fill the gap left by the removal of two dimensions from the shot, the time as well as the depth.

The primary device 

There's a common mistake often made by every novice photographer. He or she just takes the camera and tries to find a suitable shot through the viewfinder or electronic LCD display. But this is not the correct process. Photography begins in your head, that's the primary thing to understand. And the principal devices that comes into play in this regard are your set of eyes. Once we've taken enough shots and travelled for a while on the road of photography, we all realize the importance of quality over quantity. No matter how many photos you shoot, if you don't have a single one that can be considered a good shot, the entire mass of shots is next to useless.

As such, it is of utmost importance that we first capture the 'view' around us. That's why the real photography is said to begin inside your head.

Meaning of a shot 

Whenever taking a shot, one thing must be considered. What do you want to convey to the viewer? For example, when you're shooting a tree, do you mean to 'show' your viewer the loneliness surrounding the tree? Or do you wish to show it as  part of a larger group, maybe a patch of a forest? There's no hard and fast rule regarding this element of composition, but as you go on asking yourself the same question, your photographs will automatically get better with time.

Take your time, shooter! 

The proper 'moment' of the shot is important. Here, focus
is on the crow as it appears to watch the moving traffic. 

If you've watched the movie 'The league of extraordinary gentlemen' (2003), you might recall that again and again, Alan Quatermain mocks Agent Sawyer over his 'American-style shooting'. Quatermain describes Sawyer's shooting as 'shoot enough bullets and hope that it hits the target', and criticizes him often for that. Ultimately, he begins to teach Sawyer how to take the target down with a single shot. And finally, as the story required, Sawyer succeeds in killing the antagonist M (Professor Moriarty) with one shot.

What is interesting here is Quatermain's way of teaching. He mentions it twice that there's nothing to hurry, and Sawyer has 'all the time in the world' to take his shot. The same thing goes, unarguably, for photography as well. A common practice employed by novice photographers and most of those who are rather unwilling to venture into the depths of photography is that, they take many shots of the same subject, and hope to find at least one good shot. However, gradually this becomes tiresome, because it's an utterly illogical practice (unless you're intending to take continuous shots, but even that can be done with the use of specialized machinery powering even the most basic cameras today). Digital photography has given us much-needed liberty to view our shots even before actually taking them, using the digital rendering of the preview. And this should be used wisely. We should not hurry, or rush to capture a shot, especially when the subject is static. It is much better to consider every aspect of the shot before actually taking it. Finally, when we click the shooter, we are rewarded with an artistic, meaningful and elegant photo.

Lighting and time of the day 

Ambient natural lighting can produce significantly better results
than what can be achieved using artificial lightiing. 

It is worthy of being mentioned yet again, that time of the day matters a great deal when it comes to photography. When you're standing outdoors, if is always better to make use of natural light available to you, and turn your flash off. In another article, I've already listed the various kinds of natural lights and their implications. You can find it HERE.

In my opinion, whenever convenient golden-hour photography should be tried to create artistic shots. Smoothening of shadows, softer along the edges, and a golden tinge in the sunlight creates an otherworldly effect and adds a new dimension to your shots. This is the perfect time when it comes to experimenting with new artistic effects.

Single subject vs multiple subjects

We often find that there are more than one interesting subjects to capture in your photo. But in my opinion, it is better  for novice photographers to try their hands on each subject individually, even eliminating the other subject from the photo if need arises, so that they can focus entirely on the composition of the shot revolving around a single subject.

Purpose of the shot 

Lastly, it might be good thing to consider the reason behind shooting your photos. Are you just intending to capture a few lively moments with your friends and family, at a party? Or are you intending to practise the basics of photography? What's important is to focus on artistic and meaningful photography once you have enough time to invest in it, because it's possibly going to take longer than initially expected. 

Finally, there's nothing like a 'perfect' shot, or a totally imperfect one. However, what matters is your shot should convey some sort of meaning to your viewers, and should be pleasing to behold.