I used this title (“Sex and the City”) to check how it will influence traffic on my website.
Picture no. 1
Set no. 2
This post is my fifth tutorial titled “How to make the better picture?” For previous tips, click here, here, here and here.
I believe that one of the secrets in having constant progress in photography lies in the word ambiguity. To visualize what exactly I want to write about, take a look at picture no. 1. It is the picture, without any editing and my interference. This image is raw (please, do not confuse it with RAW format), I did not make any developing process with this photograph in my lovely Lightroom. What can we say about this picture? What do we see on it? The answer is obvious: the tree.
Is there anything more we can add to the description of the image? For example, we can talk about the texture and colors of this picture. Sharp green, delicate moss is visible on the gray-green wood bark. Moreover, we can find that also dark moisture stains cover the tree. In the background, we can see a fuzzy yellow color. Probably the building? Yes, I make pictures in public spaces, so there is a 99% probability that in the background, we see the block.
Is there anything else we can tell about this picture? I don’t think so.
Now, let’s move to the set of images no. 2. The picture mentioned above (no. 1) has its place in the collection. Naturally, I retouched in the Lightroom all the images from the group. Do we see trees? Probably yes. Are we able to notice something more? Again – probably yes. Now, I hope you get what I mean. If we can see something more than the trees in these pictures, what do you see there, my Dear Guest? In the set no. 2, the ambiguity is the keyword. We can interpret these pictures in many, various ways. By extracting colors (you undoubtedly already noticed that I love black and white photography), we can make our photos to look a little bit differently. We can transform reality. We can somehow re-interpret it in our imagination.
I believe it is the crucial point in turning the standard picture into the art.
Moreover, we can see here that showing your pictures in the set (not as a single image) makes viewing them much more exciting. For example, we can try to develop a story in our mind to the impressive picture. Dostoyevski was doing the same. He was observing people who surrounded him, and then, he was inventing stories by his observations, thoughts, and experience.
To conclude, if you want to take better pictures, try to transform the reality into your own inner voice. When you make photographs of unexpected things in mundane places, try to add to this image something from yourself. Try to alter the reality via your own, visual, secret language. You should also try to encode your message in the photograph and let the viewer have fun in decoding it. I believe that we all possess enough ability to create such images as the ones from the set mentioned above. It is a matter of time and hard-work to evolve in your passion.
Picture no. 1
Set no. 2
