Details, Details, Details
One thing that can separate a good photo from a great one is the details. This is an area that I have worked on improving yet still find that I have "Doh!" moments from time to time. Today's image of a formal dining room is one such example.
When arranging the lighting for this wonderful room, I completely missed that the window blind on the left is positioned differently than the other two. It is not too noticeable on the window, but the difference in reflection on the hardwood floor kills the shot. If I were to shoot this room again, I would adjust all three blinds so they give the same amount of reflection on the floor. In fact I would probably shoot it twice, once with bright reflections (like the right two windows) and once with dull reflections (like the left window).
One easy tip for catching details when photographing is to make a quick pass around the composition with your eyes prior to shooting. I like to think of the scene like a clock dial and quickly scan the shot beginning at 12:00 and moving clockwise around the frame. When photographing people, a quick scan around the outline of their body (especially the head) will alert you to any details that need correcting.
How about you? What do you do in your photography to catch the little details?
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens - 1/20 second, f/5.6, ISO 100
Labels: tutorial
4 Comments:
I spent a lot of time regretting the outcome of certain shots simply because I missed one of the little details. I learned long ago from my wife that it's the details that matter, so she taught me early on, "look at the brides teeth... does she have lipstick on them", or "check to if there are any hairs out of place in her hairdo, brides hate their hair being messed up"
To this day my wife still serves as a constant reminder of what I should be paying attention to from hair to clothing and everything in between.
Having an extra set of eyes, that's a great point. Michelle assists me on most portrait shoots. She is fantastic as noticing the little details like you mentioned. From my experience, many times men tend to be more Macro is their view while women can be more micro and thus notice the small things.
There are so many things that I don't notice until I've actually taken the shot. Looking at the scene and looking at it on the LCD screen are two very different things for me.
I usually take a few shots and scan back through them to see what things stick out, good or bad.
When I can see what the actual photo us going to look like, I can make better judgments about what looks good and what needs adjusting.
I use LCD extensively. I know you shoot Canon, and Canon's LCDs are not as useful as Nikon's, especially the new LCDs on recent cameras (and D3 and D300 will both have what they termed HD LCD's), but I use them a lot after a series of shot to check sharpness and composition as I zoom in and out of the image.
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