When Bethany and I looked out the window near 1:30 one morning and saw snow coming down, I thought it was time to take a photo. I don’t have a comparison photograph to show, but had this photo been taken from ground level, the composition would have lacked this punch. In part, a low angle is what we always see, and this high vantage is fresh.
For this shot, we opened the upstairs window. Our lawn lights illuminated the scene. I played with the shutter speed until I found the right speed to freeze the snowflakes. Then by adjusting the aperture and/or f/stop for the correct exposure, we captured this.
Since the camera was roughly halfway up the trees in elevation, the trunks are straight with the margin of the photo. That is not achieved when on the ground shooting upward.
This Painted Bunting, hundreds of miles from his normal winter habitat, was the target of this photo trip. The ice I was hoping to photograph him on was fast disappearing in the morning sun. When I was about to give up hope, the bird showed up and landed on some of the last ice remaining.
Notice I chose a vertical orientation. The perched bird on twigs making lines through the photo as you see here (predominately vertical), just feels best to me as a vertical shot. When shooting, remember cameras tip vertically also, and choose that at times rather than always shooting horizontal formats.
For animals or birds, sharp focus must be on the eye. The last time I checked, I’m quite sure there are no exceptions to this rule.
In composition, we sometimes talk about a golden ratio (1.618), or a golden spiral, and how they provide visually pleasing proportions. A nautilus shell is an example of a golden spiral in nature.
In photography, a fast way to get close to this is by using the rule of thirds. Subjects on third lines or at intersecting points are often stronger compositionally than subjects that are centered.
Notice how this Painted Bunting is composed so that the eye is on a third line intersection. Actually, in the field it may not be this precise, but the stage is set for cropping like this when back at the computer.
Have you wondered why snow scenes, or scenes like this one so often turn out dark like the above photo?
Camera light meters only read neutral gray (18% gray). That is because blue sky and green grass are this tone. Neutral gray tones make up the majority of most photos. So, when the camera sees a snow scene, it is thinking 18% gray. In other words, it grabs the white tones and pulls them back to gray.
Back in the film days, slide film was the choice of professionals shooting for publication. Once those slides were developed, what you shot is what you had. Photographers needed to understand how light meters “think” and intentionally overexpose white subjects to capture the desired brightness.
For a low-key subject, one that is predominately very dark, the opposite is true. The camera reads the darkness as 18% gray and pulls that dark photo into overexposure. The compensation requires that the exposure be darker than the camera light meter calls for to pull the dark tones back to their desired look.
Today we can adjust our exposure brighter (or darker) with a few clicks during post processing and largely recover a poorly shot original. But it never hurts to understand how cameras work and why, and what to do to bring your art back to your goals where the camera may leave off.
